This is Wednesday. She was my beloved baby. Just before Christmas, she died of congestive heart failure. She was seven years old.

Wednesday was a wonderful cat and a wonderful friend. Sweet and eerily empathetic, she could always sense the saddest person in the room and would respond by promptly going to cuddle them. She loved snuggling, playing fetch (yep, that cat played fetch) and staring out the window at all the birds she wanted to murder (but could not, as she was an indoor cat).

I loved her as much as I have ever loved anyone, and more than I have loved most.

But this post is not just a eulogy for a beloved pet. Wednesday, as it turned out, was more than a pet. She was my familiar.

While she lived, I sometimes referred to her as such, although I was usually partly joking. I wasn’t conscious of how much she was doing for me. As soon as she was gone, however, I felt a howling spiritual void open up in myself. I wasn’t just emotionally shattered, I was suddenly magically hamstrung. I realized, then, that in mostly passive ways, Wednesday had been feeding me energy and acting as a sort of spiritual signal booster– a little furry modem, if you will. With her death, my connection grew vanishingly faint.

Before she died, she reached out to us. Vix and I were lying in bed together, in his old house in Providence, RI. I had left Wednesday in California in the care of friends. I remarked to Vix how much I missed her. Instantly I heard her trademark chittering mew come from the foot of the bed, the little mew she always made before jumping up on something, as if it were necessary to her propulsion.

“That’s weird,” I started to say, “I just hallucinated hearing her meow–”

“No,” Vix said firmly, “I heard it too.” He pointed to the exact spot from which the sound had come, which I had not indicated to him.

I should have known that something was coming. That she was crying out for help.

A couple days later, I got the horrible phone call. From thousands of miles away, I had to interact with the vet, demand tests to be run, grasp at straws of hope and finally accept that she wasn’t going to recover. I made the decision to put her to sleep. It was the kindest thing I could do for her. I was not there to hold her.

Lucifer has held me many times in my grief– in the last two years I have lost four beloved friends, including one partner, and he has been there for me every time. But with Wednesday gone, I could not reach out to him. I could not feel him. I was deadened, weighted down by the limitations of cold materiality. Vix said he could feel Wednesday’s presence with us from time to time, but I could not. I was trapped in the mundane.

I came to understand that this could not be the end. I needed her, in so many ways. Calling the spirit of my familiar back into my life became the most crucial magical work at hand, the only magical work I could even attempt without her.

And why not? The Egyptians worshiped cats, mummified them and cherished them even after physical death. The familiars of the European witches were more often spirits than embodied animals. I couldn’t feel much else but I could feel her missing me, longing for me as I longed for her.

I also had the sense that in some way she had ascended, becoming even more magical and powerful by having transcended flesh. We weren’t done with each other yet.

Some might call it denial, others might call me an insane cat person. I don’t care what anyone calls it. I knew what I had to do.

I obtained a beautiful little urn for her ashes. It is a sculpture in the shape of a black cat. I prepared an altar space for her. I got myself a cat-themed tarot deck through which I hoped to continue communication. These things began to draw her nearer to me again. I would sit and stroke her urn, petting her just as I used to stroke her warm furry little body, talking to her soothingly. I could sense her gratitude.

But it was not until today that we were truly reunited, because it was not until today that I was able to retrieve her remains.

Receiving the box that held her ashes was a wonderful and terrible moment. It was terrible because it is awful to see someone you adored reduced to a little bag of gray dust. But it was also wonderful because, holding that box, I was holding her again. I knew it, I could feel it. I hugged it in my arms and I could feel her purr. The whole ride home I held that box in my lap and stroked it the way I used to stroke her spine, and I felt that purr continue. I felt her energy too, prickly heat entering my fingertips, the raw power and love of that fierce little creature, and I wept with relief and joy because she was coming home!

Once home I transferred her ashes tenderly into the urn. I lit some candles, put on “Cat People” by Bowie, did a little tarot spread. The cards told me of her relief. A time of suffering and trial was over for her. She was home, she could now relax.

I will always miss her warm little body, her passive-aggressive little mannerisms when she wanted to be fed, her tiny mews. But none of those things feel so far away anymore. I can feel her with me now, part of my home once more. I can feel her magic helping to sustain me, just as mine has always helped to sustain her.

Wednesday, this is not goodbye. Sweetest little friend, we will always be together. Welcome home, baby. Welcome with all my love.