Saving Astro

I got engaged on March 11, 2020. My partner was more panicked about Covid-19 than anyone I knew, so he proposed. Matt popped the question while chopping vegetables for dinner, and I said yes. We’d been together for three years and cohabitating for two. We’d also just returned from a romantic vacation to Portugal and Malta, and I’d confessed that I’d fantasized about him asking me to marry him on the trip, so the proposal wasn’t entirely unprompted. I didn’t care about a ring or grand gesture, but because he’d expressed so much ambivalence about marriage due to his parents’ divorce, I wanted the question to come from him. Then at the onset of the apocalypse, with both of us pushing forty, Matt pulled the trigger. We called my family to share the news: my mom sobbed with relief and my sister sent us a mug with the date of our engagement printed above a photo of our faces. We were really getting married, a drop of certainty rippling out across a gulf of chaos.

Then, I got Covid and Matt got depression. Two weeks later we were still alive, so he decided to take back the proposal. He’d felt pressured, he didn’t actually want to get married, he didn’t even believe in it. I was a wreck. But it was deep Covid and neither of us wanted to be alone, so we stayed together despite the pain and awkwardness.

A year later, we broke up. Matt moved out and took his cat, Emmett, with him. To say Matt loved this cat is an understatement. He had trained Emmett in the art of affection, and the two would lay together for hours, spooning and rubbing noses. Matt would often scoop Emmett into his arms and rock him like a baby. Emmett had eventually granted me these privileges too, which were major sources of love and comfort, particularly during the misery of lockdown.

I was gutted from the double loss, so after days on the floor, I scooped up the shards of my broken heart and took myself out to get my own goddamn cat. I wept like a new mom as he popped his tiny head out of the carrier on the car ride from Long Island City to Ditmas Park. This guy was my baby, the first pet in my life that was just mine. His name was Astro and he was soft, small, and sweet; he quickly became the best roommate I’d ever had.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing with Astro. From early on he suffered from a leaky stool that wasn’t going away, so I brought him to the vet who told me to catch his diarrhea in Tupperware and bring it in for parasite testing. After a few highly unpleasant failed attempts, I was finally successful. Astro was pretty confused when he went to cover up his feces with litter and it had disappeared.

His test came back negative, but he was eating less. Then he was hardly eating at all. Meanwhile his belly had ballooned to alarming proportions. I was scared to take him back to the vet by myself, knowing there was the likelihood of some serious bad news. So, I took a deep breath and called the biggest cat lover I could think of to accompany me: Matt. It had been several months since we’d broken up and we’d been in touch intermittently; we didn’t hate each other but we also hadn’t seen each other since our split. We were certainly far from recovered.

Matt answered immediately and offered to drive Astro and me to the vet. He waited outside as I was informed that my cat probably had Covid. Well, technically it was a feline coronavirus similar to Covid called Feline Infectious Peritonitis, or FIP.

FIP used to be a death sentence for cats but a team at UC Davis had recently uncovered a breakthrough treatment. However, it was only available on the black market. It’s not FDA approved because it’s basically remdesivir, which was approved in emergency situations to treat people with Covid-19, and apparently there were patent issues because humans have to be prioritized over cats. There was no official diagnostic test for FIP but $900 worth of tests later, everything else had been ruled out, so the vet said Astro had it. I could acquire the injectable medication by visiting a Facebook group called FIP Warriors. But it would be expensive, like thousands of dollars expensive. I had really been hoping all I had to do was change Astro’s diet.

I brought Astro back to the car and told Matt. Without blinking, he said, “You have to save Astro’s life, and I’ll help you.” The drive to save Astro surpassed the pain of our failed romance. We were now just two people on a mission.

After wading through several scam FIP Warrior Facebook pages, I came to one that seemed legit, and I was put in contact with the main northeast drug supplier who happened to live in Westchester. She told me to bring Astro to her home to be evaluated and then she would demonstrate how to inject the medicine and sell it to me.

On a Thursday night, Matt drove Astro and me from Brooklyn to a dark residential home in White Plains and as the garage door lifted, I didn’t discount the possibility of being robbed at gunpoint. But out popped a friendly middle-aged woman who bred cats. She was passionate about saving felines from FIP after one of her own had suffered through it. The woman brought us to her treatment room off the garage and showed me how to fill a syringe with medicine and lift up the skin between Astro’s shoulders to give him a subcutaneous injection. Astro wailed in pain as the burning fluid was released. Then he stress-ate some snacks, which was exciting because he had hardly eaten in weeks.

The woman sold me syringes and four unmarked vials of the clear liquid medication, which came in a cat shampoo box from China. She told me I would have to give Astro the shot at the same time every single day for the next eighty-four days. She also told me about a support group on Facebook. I could re-up through the mail. The first batch was close to one thousand dollars. To my astonishment, Matt paid for half.

Matt also came over the next night for moral support as I tried to psyche myself up to give Astro his second shot. I held the cat down on my massage table with one hand and clutched the syringe in the other. This was quite the departure from my usual treatments, which involved a human subject and massage oil. I stood for a while shaking with nerves until Matt finally yelled at me to “just do it.” As I just did it, Astro lurched and I stabbed him in the back. He let out a blood curdling shriek and I crumbled to the floor sobbing, convinced I had killed him.

Matt sunk behind me and wrapped me up in his arms. We stayed like that for a long time, and I realized love can look a lot of different ways.

“Amanda,” he said, holding me, “I’m going to call my cousin Phil to come over tomorrow and give you a proper lesson on how to do this better.” Phil was a veterinarian and would go to the ends of the earth to help an animal in need.

“Thank you so much,” I said, squeezing his hand, “I have no idea how I’m going to do this every day for the next three months.”

“You have to,” he said, “there’s no other option. But also…you’re not alone.”

The truth was I felt less alone with Matt now than I had in our final year living together.

He returned with Phil the following night (after Thanksgiving dinner nonetheless) and Phil showed me how to squat and restrain Astro between my knees while I gave him the shot. For the week of treatment thereafter, Matt came over every night for moral support. I started to get the hang of the shot, but the experience never stopped being a nightmare. Astro came to realize what was about to go down; he’d dive under the couch and I’d have to pull him out and give him the injection, which would trigger a heartbreaking wail (usually from Astro but sometimes from both of us). Then Astro would scarf down food like he was mad at it.

Matt kept paying for half the drug costs and checked in regularly, as did Phil, who also prescribed syringes for me when I ran out. I didn’t miss a day and we made it to eighty-four. Astro beat FIP.

My relationship with Matt had evolved into a loving friendship that perhaps served us better than dating ever had. We were in touch regularly and even chatted about our dating lives: a happy, unexpected turn of events, all thanks to feline covid and the black market.

Several months passed and then winter gave way to an unseasonably warm spring. One afternoon, I asked Matt if he could come over to help me install the air conditioner. A lengthy post installation hug escalated to kissing, and then our bodies came home to each other. But there was a newness, an unprecedented blossoming: spring.

Around this time, Matt read about a relationship concept known as “twin flames” or “mirror souls,” which has existed for thousands of years in various spiritual traditions. The twin flame journey often involves a separation and a reunion. Our time apart had certainly inspired personal growth which led to critical conversations about what we’d need to do differently were we to try again. It could be that we were destined to return to each other, but I really don’t know if it would have happened without Astro. Maybe the ancient Egyptians were onto something, believing cats are magic. Maybe the twin flame reunion needs a catalyst. Or perhaps a deepened, more honest love is what happens when two people join forces to save an innocent life.

Over a long weekend, Matt and I traveled together to Montreal where we visited the Notre-Dame Basilica, took in a Cirque du Soleil inspired show, and stood before Leonard Cohen’s old house. On the final night of our trip, in the kitchen of our Airbnb, Matt proposed, this time with a ring—a sapphire, my birthstone. On the inside of the band, he had engraved the words, “Amanda, my twin flame.” This time, the presence of the ring was significant, reflective of a measured intentional choice and not an impulse born of panic. Three months later, we got married in a small Vegas-inspired chapel in Manhattan. Now we live in a more spacious apartment in Brooklyn with our two cats, Emmett and Astro. They cuddle and groom each other, but they also fight like crazy. The most peaceful times are when the four of us are in bed, nestled together.

Read more about Amanda by clicking on her bio: https://thievingmagpie.org/amanda-miller-bio/