An Ode to the World's Most Wretched Cat

Nov 18, 2025

Sashabelle the Cat’s uniquely evil essence was the stuff of legend within our family, our friends and the few select veterinarians who had the misfortunate to treat her. Her time on earth ended this weekend, but her story will live in infamy.

It began when our daughter, Alijah, was nine years old and she adopted a sweet, floofy, blue-grey, 3-week-old kitten. At least, she looked sweet. Little did we know, we had welcomed Satan incarnate into our lives for what would turn out to be an eighteen-year long reign of terror.

We had been fostering kittens for the Humane Society for quite a while, raising a steady stream of tiny fluffballs until they were mature enough and healthy enough to be adopted. By the time Sasha and her brothers, Winston and Pistachio, showed up, we had already fostered somewhere in the neighborhood of 32 kitties and had always been quite successful at returning them to the Humane Society. But when it came time to return Sasha to the shelter, Alijah was utterly devastated. She cried, she begged, she offered preposterously unsustainable promises of flawless care and feeding, she pledged perfect attendance and devotion to her schoolwork but I wasn’t having it.

We dropped those three kittens at the shelter on the way to school and I had never seen my daughter so sad. For the rest of the day, my stomach churned and burned until I finally caved and went back to the Humane Society. When I picked the Kid up from school that day, the little gray Hell spawn who would become her dearest companion for nearly two decades greeted her from a box in the front seat. I had never seen my daughter so happy.

Sasha had seemed pretty normal while we fostered her with her brothers, but without them she … changed. Only Alijah was able to touch her, feed her or make eye contact with her. All others were met with growling snarls if you were lucky, or outright savage, indiscriminate carnage if you were not. Sashabelle was wholly unfamiliar with the concept of “don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” In fact, she quite relished biting, scratching, thrashing and pummeling hands — especially when they were feeding her because that added the element of surprise. Meanwhile, Alijah could dress her up in doll clothes and take her for long walks in her kitty stroller, followed by a warm bath or shower and suffer zero repercussions. The rest of us lived in fear.

One of Sashabelle’s favorite games was to perch atop an open door, waiting untold hours for her unsuspecting prey (aka me or Adam) to walk through the doorway so that she could pounce down onto our heads, sinking every last claw into our scalps and hiss-laughing (I shit you not) while we screamed and tried to swat her off with any available defensive implement — you didn’t want to use your hands for this assignment, it just led to further injuries.

Every vet visit with Sasha began with us delivering an ominous warning about how evil and dangerous she was. Every vet responded with something chirpy like, “Oh, you guys are so funny. I have a mean cat too, it’ll be fine.” Then two minutes later, bloodied and bewildered, they would leave the room to get reinforcements, muttering in astonishment, “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Once, after completing this entire ritual, (which this time left multiple vet techs cowering in various corners of the room, tending to their wounds and refusing to assist unless they were allowed to use a spiked truncheon), the vet foolishly thought she could administer the eye exam on her own. Standing several feet away, she picked up the exam flashlight and we quickly stopped her.

“You should move back. She can still reach you from there,” we warned. The vet glanced at us with a patronizing smile and started to say, “I don’t think…” just as the Kitty from Hell whipped her elasticized lightning bolt of an arm out of the bag and opened up a gash across the vet’s face before she could finish her sentence. Professional veterinary diagnosis: Demon Elasticat. That one went in Sasha’s permanent record. Left a permanent scar on the vet too.

During Sashabelle’s last moments, we gathered around her in Alijah’s living room to say goodbye. We thanked her for her dedication to Alijah and for keeping my daughter alive during the worst struggles of her adolescence and early adulthood.

The in-home vet administered what should have been a lethal dose of the euthanasia drug for such a frail kitty, followed by another dose a few minutes later, but tiny, fragile Sasha just kept hanging on. It suddenly occurred to me that she would never, under any circumstances, leave Alijah without knowing her girl would be okay. I whispered to Alijah that Sasha probably needed permission to go. Alijah somehow summoned the strength to tell her beloved beast that she would be okay without her and we all promised Sasha that we would look after Alijah when she was gone. She peacefully let go a few seconds later, and presumably went back to her post at Satan’s side.

I never liked Sasha; she never liked me. Or Adam. She eventually liked Alijah’s boyfriend Sam once she had been living with him for three years — everyone else remained a useless waste of flesh to her. But oh, dear Lord did Alijah and that wretched fucking cat love each other.