Will Sleep for Food
Posted to Peter Nidzgorski's frequently beautiful "This isn't happiness" tumblog today, with the caption "This is our cat Bob. He died today. He was 20 years old." A colleague of mine lost a cat on Christmas Eve who had been a loving four-pawed companion for about that long. Losing a pal like that is a sad thing. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin)
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our old tom made it past 20. The last year he walked by himself, and then lay down in his favorite spot and just let go.
My favorite cat, Mousebane, was an indoor/outdoor cat. He finally met a dog that he couldn't scare off and was mangled a bit - but he still lived another few years and died at around 14 years. That was a few years ago - we have four strictly indoor cats now and rarely have an unoccupied lap. I love dogs, but with a cat, you know when they come lie down in your lap, its because you've earned their trust and are an OK person in their book. Our cats opinion: Cats rule, dogs drool.
Hey Bob, say howdy to Keek and Charlie, they'll introduce you to Taxi, Louis, Hank, Bill, Tuffy, Felix, Twoser, and Katie, along with a few short-termers.
My dear Ashes passed away this year too - I wrote a (simple) comic and blog post about it here. In the end she was so incredibly sick and none of the vets knew what to do. Many condolences to everyone who lost a furry best friend...
Lost our favorite baby boy at 15 years of age in 2004 and it still makes me tear up when I think of it. We had him on a special diet to avoid the common problem of bladder stones that affects male cats, and that ended up creating a different type of stone that can't be dissolved through dietary changes. So, our choice was watch him die slowly and painfully, or drop a bundle of cash on risky surgeries to try and fix it (very risky, at his age). We opted for the latter, and the retarded vet we took him to left the original stones behind when he operated.
And I have to agree with Tom's sentiment on dogs. We've now got two cats, both strays. One was born wild and we picked her up at 8 months to keep her out of the hands of the Japanese police (there's no Humane Society over here), and I'm still winning her affection (she bonded with my wife); it's a real happy day when she comes to me for affection. The other was abandoned with the worst case of tapeworms that two vets had ever seen (he really should have died), and I'm pretty sure the worms got into his brain, because he's the weirdest cat I've ever owned or met!
I still miss my boy, though.
bob, please give a lick and some purrs to artemis and basho when you see them. artemis went just ahead of you this past summer in july, but you were older than her. she was 18. basho's been gone a couple years now, but i miss him terribly. now we are kitty-less, and lolcats gives me comfort. you looked like a handsome, sweet cat. i can tell your owners loved you very much.
my cat gris gris sends his condolences.
this brought a heavy stone upon my chest. my cat is 16 and has chronic sinus infections with a slight chance it might be just allergies. we're still working that kink out. at one point in time i thought it was time because she weezed like no time before. her nose was crusted and took a half hour to clean off. the cat has been with me for 16 years. the following day i called vets and got prices and then suggested alternatives; death or medication. i chose to spend $ and try meds just for the chance she'll come bug me in the middle of the night about food or water or that she can't wait till summer so she can hang outside again. luckily things are working better for her but this post just reminded me that sometime i'm going to say bye for the last time.
i was adopted by a one-eyed feral cat whom i call "leela". i feed her and occasionally give her a scritch on the noggin, we say "hey" in passing and if she drops a ( hopefully deceased) rodent off by the door, we're talkin' TUNA FEAST! and she gets along with the dogs and tortoises and sometimes sleeps with them when it gets cold.
My heart goes out to you - I lost my Cinder, at only 11 years and 4 months on Dec. 11th. I met this cat when he was 2 days old and we bonded that day, I took him and his brother home 8 weeks later.
I woke up at 3:30 on Dec. 11th to hear him racing through the apartment, then collapse in my bedroom out of breath.
A rush to find an emergency vet and a 15 mile drive in the rain and fog, I found out he was blind and had neuroligcal problems.
I drove him to the regular vet, she saw that his brain was making the world spin uncontrollably. Possible blood clot, stroke or brain tumor. He was not in distress, I left him at the vet for observation. He didn't get better.
On the twealth I went back to the vet - he hadn't improved despite a steroid shot. Still no distress, he was just confused.
I took off my denim jacket and sat on the floor with him in my arms so he could feel my warmth and heartbeat - he wrapped his paw around my arm, holding tightly. I didn't notice until later he'd broken the skin
I sat and petted him, he couldn't see, I know he was frightened and he still purred for me. I held him tightly and murmured to him that we'd make everything ok.
He meowed briefly when the doctor injected the sedative, I whispered to him to not be afraid, the doctor was doing her best to help him. He settled down and was soon sleeping peacefully.
I stood up and laid him on the towel on the table.
The doctor shaved a bit of fur from his leg and connected the IV. I scratched his ears and talked to him, nonsense words, just so he could hear me.
I closed his eyes as the doctor took out her stethescope and listened.
"He's gone." she murmured sadly, but I knew it already.
I kissed him goodbye and petted him one last time, then thanked the doctor and her assistant for making sure that he wasn't in pain or afraid anymore. The doctor assured me I had done the best thing for him, I know she was right but I still wish I had been able to do something more.
I bonded with this cat when he was 2 days old and still had his eyes shut. I have never had an animal this devoted to me ever, and I miss him - it's been two weeks and my best friend is still gone.
He should have had at least five more years. His brother has been insperable from me since. i wish I could explain to him why his littermate is gone. i wish I could explain it to myself in a way where I didn't blmae myself somehow.
It took an 18 y.o. dog sized cat named Felix to make me realize how someone could become a crazy cat lady. Even thought he was the first pet I've had since I was 12 (he was forced upon me by wife to be's family), I still get choked up more thinking about him than when I think of deceased relatives. Goodnight Bob. - Peter
This hit home for me, I lost my boy this August. He was only 3. It still makes me cry when I think about him. It makes me want to cry whenever I hear of someone else losing their furry friend.
I feel for you on this one. I have a cat that I got out of a cardboard box almost 19 years ago. He is now a senior citizen and I am grateful that he is still around.
If reincarnation is real, I want to be somebody's cat in the next life. All these years where I went out and worked and toiled, he would wake up and look at me like I was crazy and then go back to sleep. They say it's a dog's life, but cats know better......
20 years is a good chunk of time for a cat. I hope all of mine go that long.
My cat Ein died about a month ago, while I was away from home.
I really love him, and I'll really miss him.
He was a very handsome and playful cat, All white fluffy fur, with bright yellow eyes, And I made him wear a glittery pink collar of coarse.(picture of Ein) http://tinyurl.com/axe62x
Iv'e never seen a cat with so many expression as I have on my Ein.
lol He used to go on top of the coffe table with my dog at the bottom of it fast asleep, and push a full stack of magazine right on top of her every time(on purpose). Then he would look at me like "WHAT?".
I've never had a pet that I bonded with as much a I had with him.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
Sleep well,little one.
My little angel, sent from above.
With sandpaper kisses, and a heart filled with love.
Rest in Peace Bob.
My Domino will be 20 this spring.
He is my mom's cat now - hubby is deathly allergic, and mom spoils him way worse than I ever did.
He was a skinny little runt with fleas, ear mites, and worms when I got him (thanks, sis, for the b-day present!)...and he was so tiny (12 oz.) they had to weigh him on the postage scale at the vet's - he wasn't big enough to make the big scale register. He's been sleek and shiny every since, the picture of health
His kidneys are now acting up, and he has high blood pressure. We all know he's begun his long walk toward the bridge, and it's killing all of us. His pal Flop (18 yrs) will be waiting, but it will be hard to let him go.
My beautiful boy Archie has been MIA since March after being chased off by a wandering dog - he was only 5. He had a host of medical problems and a list of neuroses as long as your arm. I still have his littermate Chester (who turned out to be a girl, go figure). Chester seemed to be lonely, she'd never been alone before, and I live alone apart from the fluffies so even though I wasn't quite ready myself I got a kitten, Starbuck (made sure of the sex this time, a tortie so I'm pretty damn sure she's female, lol) and she's brightened the place for both of us.
Bob can say hello to Smokey, provided he's polite, who we lost a few years ago at the ripe old age of 18. A more cantankerous and unpleasant cat it would have been difficult to find. He was great with humans, but man, WOE betide you if you happened to be another cat or dog who had the temerity to live in the same household. Smokey was tiny, unkempt and skinny as a rake his entire life no matter how well he was fed. He ruled the other animals, all of whom outweighed him by at least two to one, through sheer, utter nastiness. When he got old and couldn't beat up on them any more, he just fell back on his patented death glare. It was enough. He was such an asshole, lol. I miss him terribly.
We lost our beloved feline curmudgeon Beauregard Diddleysquat back in 2006. He lived 20 years and 3 months. His human-daddy, R. Stevie Moore was so distraught that he ran out of the vet's office when the end came. Beau knew lots of words like pizza and jungle plus he listened to a whole lotta music.
The best thing to do is adopt another feline companion. Shelters are full and you need the kitties, don't you?
dammit, i came back to read my post from last night (which i had a hard time typing through the tears), and now i'm crying again for all o you who have also lost amazing, beautiful cats. everyone has told such wonderful stories and posted pictures, i feel like i knew your cats as well. my heart goes out to all of you.
my cat is 5 years old... and reading this makes me sad.
Sad thread makes me sad.. but in a good way.
I miss my ferret.
I could only get through the first few comments... : (
This isn't really Godwin's law, I promise: My first cat was named Adolph. She was a manx, and had a white face with a big sloping patch of black that covered one ear and the top of her head, along with another, smaller patch of black just under her nose. She, however, was not genocidal, despite the time I spent trying to keep her trapped underneath my blanket when I was a toddler.
My mother picked her out from a number of other kittens because she was the runt; the lady who was giving the cats away said, "You don't want that one, she won't last another month." Mom said, "Oh no, I definitely want that one."
She was so small and weak that for the first three months, her only mode of locomotion was pulling her tiny kitty body along with just her front paws. It probably was touch-and-go for a while there, but I wasn't even born yet and can't attest to it. I do know that when I came into the world, she was doing just fine, scampering around the house like a rabbit (usually because she was trying to evade the aforementioned blanket).
She lasted until we had just moved into our new house - about 9 years - and then succumbed very quickly to what I believe was the feline equivalent of breast cancer. When my mom and dad went to take her to the vet, they told me she was going in for surgery to remove the tumor. They came back a few hours later and told me that she died during the surgery. We buried her in the back yard, next to a plantain tree she was particularly fond of. It wasn't until I was 20 years old that I finally realized that they hadn't actually taken her in for surgery at all - it was prohibitively expensive - and rather had been forced to put her to sleep.
A few months after Adolph died, one of my mom's coworkers stopped by her classroom to drop off a cardboard box, and asked my mom to look inside. And there was Ernie. Or, as his full name went, Ernesto De Qat.
Ernie was a tiny kitten that somebody had left in a box on the side of the road; he was my first kitten. I remember how often he curled up into a tiny ball to sleep. I also remember the way he sneezed.
Those sorts of small, wonderful things helped me through the sudden, completely unexpected death of my mom due to a major heart attack when I was 15. When my dad stopped being my dad anymore because of the grief, and my brother basically moved in with my aunt and uncle, I felt left behind, but I wasn't alone, because there was Ernie, always wanting to have his ears scratched, always begging for just a little bit of the residual tuna from the can.
When I first moved away to college, I couldn't take him with me, but after my Sophomore year I moved in to an off-campus apartment and Ernie came to stay. He continued to help me cope with depression, loneliness, bad grades... he was my best and only friend for a very long time.
Ernie had been in my life since I was eight years old. After I dropped out of college and moved to New York for a job, I started to worry about his health, because now I was 23 and he was 15. But he hung in there like a champ. I went through more rough times, but after landing a great job, my life started trending upwards. I met and later became engaged to the most wonderful, beautiful, compassionate, funny woman I'd ever seen, and Ernie, thankfully, approved.
I don't know how long he'd been battling whatever the stomach problem was that the vet couldn't identify, but I'd like to think that it wasn't the disease that took him, in the end. I'd like to think that he thought that I was in good hands with my wonderful fiancée, and that his hard work was finally over.
He passed on late this spring. Scratching his ears in his favorite spot as he lay on the vet table for the last time, I asked him in a whisper to tell my mom that I said hello, and that I had turned out fine, and was going to marry a girl she'd be proud of. And I told him to tell her that he deserved a big can of tuna, for all the love and support that he gave me through the years.
Then I said goodbye, and he was gone.
Our Petie was a red ginger mackerel tabby - the greatest guard cat ever. He always did a great job of protecting us. We lost him last March and still miss him so much. He's getting his favorites roasted turkey and salmon in kitty heaven.
I miss my Rosie and Lily every day. My mom brought them home to my sister and me from the North Shore Animal League when we were 7 years old. In 2002, when I was 23, Rosie, our "furry meatloaf", began to lose weight rapidly. We took her to the vet expecting they would be able to help whatever was wrong, but they found the massive tumor and we didn't get to take her home. It was one of the saddest days of my life.
Lily, always rail-thin and petite, pined away for her and died 4 months later, also in my arms, at the vet. Her veins were so tiny it took them forever to get the needle into her delicate bird-like leg.
I've had more rescued kitties since then, and I love them dearly, but Rosie and Lily were my first cats and dearest to my heart. I've never bonded with an animal the way I did with them. Rosie slept with me every night, curled up in the small of my back.
Sleep easy, gorgeous boy.
awwwwwww
these posts make me want to just rub up against all of you and purrr and get headscratches until everything's okay again
also, Beauregard Diddleysquat is one of the coolest catnames ever. of all time.
Seems like this winter wasn't kind to old animals. Sorry you're not with us any more, Bob. Please don't pick on Joaquin in cat heaven.
Oh, I'm at my desk crying right now over all your wonderful cat stories. (I miss my Rocky still....say hi to him, Bob)
I'm going home at lunch to headscratch my two kitties and give them some surprise tuna treats. I don't know what I'd do without a cat or two in my life.
"What greater gift that the love of a cat?"- Dickens
If I'd known that my cat's final days couldve
been immortalized on bboing, i'dve given them
my link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIntEKQzGkY
This is about a week before he passed, of old age.
This wasn't happiness either.
I'm so terribly sorry to hear they lost a cat.
My wife Jen and I have had several cats over the years, we started with a trio of rescue kittens from the North Shore Animal Shelter in Salem, MA.
Alas the kittens were too young to be accurately given a feluke test and we got three false negatives. Each of them proceeded to die from different causes, ultimately due to the feluke though, over a period of three years.
Since then we've lost another cat, a real sweetheart, to an anaesthesia mishap while getting her teeth cleaned.
So I feel your friend's grief, I wish you could tell them it gets better with time but like as with any lost family members that's totally a lie. All that happens is that the pain blurs a bit.
In the meanwhile I'll give Hippolyta, Antiope, and Callisto a hug when I get home and whisper to my statue of Bast that she should watch out for Bob and love him well.
-abs thinks that if he and his wife weren't atheists it's pretty damn certain they would be Bast worshippers, in fact, despite being devout Pastafarians we are much more devout Bastians, Ramen
I lost my lovable ol' Gurney in March, when he was almost 17. He was a wonderful orange and white sweetie. I got him and his late brother when I was stationed in England.
I still feel him jump on the bed at night, and I am sure my two current cats feel him and his brother's presence. I adopted Gurney's successor Rolly shortly after his passing- a little Meezer orphaned by foreclosure. He and Pixel are great pals.
It's hard to lose a kitty-friend, but often, they send you a successor to soothe the ache.
...I'm holding one of the two ancient cats who've moved in with me following the arrival of "Stumpy", and one of them looks so much like the cat in that picture it's uncatty. My condolences go out to Peter and his family for their loss, because just by looking in the eyes of that cat you can tell he was an intelligent, lovable part of the family.
I just realized that today is the 8th anniversary of the passing of another of our kitties, Nico Knee Puccini. Egad! How could I forget?
It was in the middle of a blizzard and I had to get Nico to the vet. She had stopped eating and was not her usual self. My boss picked me up in the blinding storm and took me to the vet but sadly, nothing could be done for Nico. Had to say goodbye and my heart was broken. I raised her from a kitten. Her main goals in life were to eat, sleep and occasionally climb up as high as she could possibly get like on top of my head or above any doorjam.
Stevie and I grieved for her but I had to go to the shelter to help out another kitty. I picked out Rikki (formerly known as Runt) and she came home on January 6th.
Here are Beauregard Diddleysquat and Nico Knee Puccini:
http://www.angelfire.com/pop/patdou/images/kitties.jpg
Here is Rikki (8 years old and very active):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kryso/2485188416/in/set-72157600279289390/
And her little brother Stevie Joe Wondermint:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kryso/518774149/in/set-72157600279289390/
Argh. This is a knife in my gut. I lost my Hopey this summer and Bubbles a year before that. I'm nowhere near over it and I doubt I ever will be.
The Youtube of the cat purring is PRICELESS and I wish I had thought of it. I'd give my right arm to hear my cats' purr right now.
Next time your cat bugs the shit outta you with their nagging meow for food, a pet or a lap, suck it up and SUCK IT UP. I regret every second I took them for granted.
RIP
I have had cats in my family and loved them all my life. I have 2 now who have been my babies for 12 years, and, as they age with me I am dreading the days when I will have to take them for their final trips to the vets, or worse still, when I hear the screech of brakes outside my house that has signified terrible pain and loss for me with previous cats.
This morning, in one of the villages on the way to work, the brakes were mine. I hit the most beautiful fluffy ginger and white cat when it ran out in front of my car and, going too fast, I couldn't stop in time. Although it ran off somewhere I didn't see (as they tend to even when mortally wounded), and there was no blood, I felt it hit hard enough to believe I have killed a beautiful, beloved pet, and I have not stopped crying all day, nor will I ever forgive myself. My extra five minutes sleep has cost an innocent cat it's life, and there is no excuse.
My heart breaks for all those remembering their lost pets, for the memory of Sherbert, Rimau, Rajah, Minky, Willow and Tip, and for the unknown cat I killed this morning. I am so sorry.
I hadn't spotted anyone else mention it so on a more positive note here's a link to this news article (and rather nice photo) about firemen giving oxygen through breathing apparatus to several cats overcome by smoke in a house fire this week (one cat died but six survived).
Aww man.....I am terribly sorry for the loss of Bob. I know exactly what it's like I lost one of my dear kitties (Ruby) about five years ago, and another (Smokey) about ten, and I still haven't gotten over it. I didn't learn how Ruby really went until this Thanksgiving. It's terribly hard. I know Bob will be a safe, happy feline in kitty heaven. And, Bob, say hi to Ruby and Smokey for me.