This is not a dead pet column. Honest. The bar for a dead pet column should be quite high. If every American writer spun prose when their pets died, readers would be left with nothing else. Who would be available to write a take about what Selena Gomez whispered to Taylor Swift at the Golden Globes? Who would make sense of our night terrors over artificial intelligence, winter storms and Boeing 737 Max 9s?

So, I promise, this is not a dead pet column.

My cat died over the weekend. We think she was 18, an elderly, wildly chubby tabby with nary a problem in the world. This Rubenesque lady lived long and left peacefully, the best any creature can hope for.

Here is a short history of her presence: A dozen years ago, I bought a house with a partner. Then we broke up. Then my dog died. (I did not write a dead dog column. Shower me with praise for such restraint.)

You're narrowing your eyes and thinking: This sounds like a dead pet column. And I can see how you would think that!

Anyway, I found myself alone in a big, creaky house, and after several months I missed having a furry weirdo perceive me. I was not ready for another dog, but a cat? I'd never had a cat. Never wanted a cat. Never gave cats a thought. Maybe the New Me was a cat person?

I told some friends I was half-thinking of a cat. They happened to be moving and needed to ... offload a cat.

We made a date. They brought over the cat, Maya, so we could sample each other's personalities. Over lasagna, we resembled a stock photo titled "Laughing Over Wine While Auditioning Cat." The cat ignored us. At some point, we acknowledged that the cat would stay. Who auditions a cat?

Maya's energy was giving off Landed Gentry. Not quite royal, but the beneficiary of enough generational fortune that she didn't have to work. My now-husband gave her the honorary title of The Countess, which morphed over time into her name. I do not think that cats care or even know what their names are, not like dogs do, but I look forward to your emails to the contrary.

OK, you're impatient. You're saying, if this is not a dead pet column, what is it?

Here's what I think. This has been a dreadful winter, personally speaking, topped off by Countess crossing ye olde rainbow bridge to her British peerage system castle in the sky. Amid a slate of sadness and impermanence, though, I've begun to suss out a slice of holy clarity, a message that loss is not only OK, it's essential. Maybe we only learn who we are when our certainties vanish.

Now, if this were a column about a dead pet, which it is not, it would be customary at this point to describe how the cat changed my heart. How she turned me into a cat person. How I immediately started looking for a new cat to fill this vacancy of the soul.

Except, what I learned is, I'm not a cat person! I do not want another cat, maybe ever. I prefer dogs, in that they use the bathroom outside and regard me in awe, as if I have expertly explained tax portability.

That doesn't mean I didn't love the cat. We all did. At the end, we held a bowl of repugnant chicken goo to her face. We wept when we found her, her chest no longer rising and falling. But no amount of genuine ardor for my dear old feline, who did not have the best litter box aim, who craved being vacuumed — I mean literally having her fleshy folds sucked into the Bissell Pet Hair Eraser — who would trample 10 men to get to a fuzzy blanket, who stood by the pantry and screamed for food like an Edvard Munch masterwork, who died as she lived, on the couch, could turn me into a cat person. Now I know.

Not a dead pet column, no. An alive person column. Here in January, when we're self-analyzing soft spots and weaknesses, the only real guarantee is that time will pass. Big, fat kitties will grow thin and old and weary, and so will we. The only solution is to try things. To let big, grimy life saunter on in.

We buried her in the backyard, nestled in a box, wrapped in one of her soft blankets. Our chunky little noblewoman. Our greasy spinster aunt. Our cheese-stuffed teacher. The subject of, fine, yes, OK, an inevitable dead pet column. Fine. Hurry with the food, she would yowl at 5 a.m., and make peace with your fate, human.

Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on Twitter or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

Photo credit: Mateus Campos Felipe at Unsplash