A little more than four years ago, I adopted a little orange tabby named Delilah. She was a bit moody and distrustful and intent on taking her sweet time to get to know me. For the first few weeks, she’d only venture from the food dish to the litter box, with an occasional stop at the bed (when I was sleeping in it). She seemed sure she would be staying only a short time and didn’t want to waste her time getting to know the place. She’d been moved around a lot, so I understood her trepidation.

A few years later, she was a little more settled in. But she never really fell in love with me, my apartment, or my other cat. She’d sit on my lap if I was still long enough and she slept on the bed with me most nights. But she never got over her intial standoffishness and we never really bonded.

This winter, when she started scratching and biting more often and then stopped using the litterbox entirely, I knew our time together was probably close to an end. At first, I made an extra effort to keep the litter box clean and to be super nice to her when I was home, and tried to be home more often (which is hard to do when the object of your affection lives three hours away). Nothing seemed to work. It just kept getting worse. Soon, she wasn’t just pooping in the kitchen, she was peeing in the corner and on bath mats, and it didn’t matter how clean the litter box was. She started biting all the time. One night, when my sister was sitting on the couch, she leaned her head back toward Delilah. Deli bit a chunk out of Katie-did’s head. Nice.

After much soul searching, I came to the conclusion that I was incapable of making the cat happy.I decided to let an animal advocacy organization find her a new home.

On Friday, I drove Deli to the shelter and “surrendered” her. She knew something was up. She cried the whole way but when we got there, she seemed resolute about what was going to happen. With little ceremony, the workers there had me fill out paperwork and then took Deli away in her little green carrier. I didn’t even really say goodbye.

I felt guilty about it all weekend. I kept picturing her in a shelter with other cats, wondering where in the hell I’d gone, confused about the new sounds and smells. I knew that all the time we’d invested in getting comfortable with each other was completely obliterated when I gave her up. Whoever adopted her next would have to suffer through even more of her adjustment issues than I’d gone through. I wrote a little narrative about her and her quirks and personality before I’d given her up. I hoped that would help a little.

It was all for naught. This morning, I got a call from the shelter. Since Saturday, they’ve been unable to “handle” her. She hisses, bites, scratches, and growls whenever anyone comes near her cage. They were just calling to let me know that, unless I had other options, they were going to euthanize her. I told them if I’d had other options, I wouldn’t have given her up.

By now, I’m sure, Deli is gone. And the feeling I’m left with is a strange combination of guilt and validation. Apparently, it wasn’t just me. Delilah was obviously woefully unhappy and perhaps ill in some way. And, most likely, her fractiousness would have grown in time, even if she’d stayed with me. I don’t know how I could have done it better. In some ways, I’m relieved that the little girl kitty who could sometimes be a sweetheart is no longer in any pain or vexed by whatever distress had been causing her to act out in the ways she had been lately.

But I can’t help feeling that I’ve failed her. I made a commitment to her four years ago that I would take care of her, and I didn’t. I abandoned her to strangers and when that didn’t work out, I basically gave them permission to kill her.

I feel horrible.

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