February 19, 2026 was a day I will never forget.
In the morning, I took my cat Gavvy to the vet for oral surgery. At his last checkup, the vet had found he had some bad teeth that needed to be removed. This is something that, from my experience, always happens eventually with cats, although at age 9, Gavvy was younger than other cats of mine had been when they needed oral surgery. I wasn't thrilled about Gavvy having to go through the ordeal, or about the cost, but it was nothing I hadn't experienced before.
I took W with me to drop Gavvy off - the people in the vet office are always excited to see her. I then took her to daycare and went to work.
That afternoon the USA women's hockey team was facing off against Canada for the Olympic gold medal. Laila Edwards, one of the stars of the team and the first Black woman to play for Team USA in the Olympics, is from Cleveland Heights, the city I call home, and we've really latched onto her as a local hero. It was really fun to see the outpouring of support during the Olympics. The New Heights Grill, a bar/restaurant in my neighborhood, had become a site for watch parties, and I decided to leave work early to catch the game there.
The place was packed when I entered close to half an hour before the puck dropped. I'd intended to get lunch there, but with nowhere to sit decided to go home, where I ate lunch and also watched the first period of the game before returning to the watch party.
Watching a sports game in a crowded New Heights Grill definitely took me back to all the Cavs playoff games I watched there during their run to the title, almost ten years ago now. What a time that was.
Team USA had dispatched Canada 5-0 during the group stage, so I was expecting the Americans would skate to the gold. A familiar feeling of Cleveland sports disappointment filled the establishment as instead Canada grabbed a 1-0 lead and was holding on to it as the clock ticked down in the third period.
But then, with just over two minutes left, Laila Edwards shot the puck toward the goal, and team captain Hilary Knight deflected the shot into the net, tying the game!
The crowd exploded in cheers and I enthusiastically joined in. What an exhilarating moment.
Just as time ran out on regulation, sending the game to overtime, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I saw that it was the vet and went outside to take the call.
The vet told me that Gavvy was out of surgery, but that she'd found something when removing his teeth, and it looked like he had cancer.
What??? I was completely stunned. The exhilaration that had filled me moments before evaporated in an instant. How could my beloved Gavvy, the cat with whom I've formed a more special bond than I've had with any other non-human being in my life, possibly have cancer at only 9 years old?
The vet explained that she had taken a sample, and both she and the other vet had looked at it under a microscope, and they were pretty sure he had squamous cell carcinoma. They needed to send a biopsy for testing, but it sounded unlikely that they were wrong.
I got off the phone just dumbfounded and horrified. I quickly looked up squamous cell carcinoma in cats and saw that when it occurred in the mouth, it was often found during oral surgery to remove bad teeth, because the cancer could cause the bad teeth. I also saw that the prognosis was very bad. Gavvy might have just a few months to live. He seemed like his normal self! We hadn't noticed anything unusual! How could this possibly be happening? I'd thought he was only about halfway through his life, not near the end.
I went back into the New Heights Grill. I decided I'd watch overtime before going to pick Gavvy up. The US scored to win the gold, and I joined in the cheers, but halfheartedly.
I then went to get Gavvy from the vet. I felt so sad when I saw him. He had no idea what was going on, of course. My heart was just breaking.
Later that afternoon I picked W up from daycare. When she saw me, she got a big smile on her face and ran to hug me. For a moment, I felt happy.
In the days that followed, I was just a wreck. It had been quite some time since I'd experienced such emotional turmoil. Every time I looked at Gavvy, I felt like crying. It just wasn't fair. He'd grown so much from the young cat who had been separated from his feline mother too early, and who latched onto me as his replacement mother and initially only trusted me and had behavioral issues around other humans and especially other cats.
He had come to accept and love Erin and was doing surprisingly well with W and I'd so been looking forward to seeing her grow up with him. It was just so surreal looking at him and thinking he'd be gone so soon.
Well, anyway, on February 24, five days after the surgery, I got another call from the vet. The biopsy results were in, and...
Gavvy didn't have cancer!!!
It turned out it was something called alveolar osteitis. He would need another surgery to take care of the rest of it after he fully recovered from the first surgery, but he'd be totally fine.
Tears filled my eyes, but this time they were tears of joy. A huge smile spread across my face.
The moment I learned that Gavvy does not, in fact, have cancer was honestly one of the happiest moments of my life. Not the happiest - certain events like getting married or becoming a father do rank higher - but it's up there.
And that's very interesting. Because if the vet hadn't mistaken alveolar osteitis for squamous cell carcinoma in the first place, I would have been spared five days of intense emotional turmoil and what, at the time, felt like a genuinely traumatic experience. But I also wouldn't have experienced one of the happiest moments of my life. That says something about the experience of being human, I think.
So, yeah. Life is weird.
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