Julie's Birthday

Today, June 14, is Julie’s birthday. Sort of. 

We adopted Julie in November of 2007. She was a kitten at the time, but not a newborn. We didn’t really know her birthday. For whatever reason, we surmised she was about five months old, so that meant her birthday was in June. For the sake of picking a day, we picked June 14, maybe because it’s Flag Day? I have no idea. Anyway, Julie’s official birthday, for many years, was June 14, as memorialized on her Facebook page, which I made back in 2009. 


A few years ago, I combed through some old Julie photos, and noticed something I hadn’t before. The first known photo of Julie, taken before I ever met her, had a time stamp. April 13, 2007. I would guess she was about four weeks old in that photo. 


Of course, the time stamp could have been wrong. But that suggested to me that Julie was born well before June 14, 2007. Most likely, she was born in March of that year. 


Something’s always amused me that Julie spent most of her life with a birthday that undersells her age. As a child, I was very close to my family’s housekeeper. Her name was Dolores, but we called Dutta. When she was a teenager back in the late ‘30s, Dutta lied about her age to get her driver’s license a year early. (I guess this kind of thing was easier to do back then?) So on her fifteenth birthday, she got a driver’s license, even though she should not have been eligible for another year. The charade was never corrected, and she lived her entire life with a legal age that was a year more than her actual age. She would later joke that she was the only woman in the world who tried to make herself seem older. 


Of course, there’s a bitterness to this Julie pho-birthday. I know that it will be her last. The absolute best-case scenario, according to her oncologist, is twelve months. The more realistic best-case is six months, and even that would be remarkable. But what can you say? Every day on the calendar now will be the last one we spend together. Tomorrow is June 15, and it will be the last June 15 she is with us. And then the next day will be June 16, which will be the last June 16 she is with us. And so forth, until one day she is not with us. I can’t type this words without feeling melancholy, but it’s a reality I have accepted as I try to make her remaining days as comfortable and happy as possible. 


So, happy fourteenth birthday, Julie — even if it was actually a few months ago. 

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