Tribute

Boo was my first pet. I saw his picture and knew he was my cat. I said, “That’s my cat.” I went to the Humane Society and I didn’t want to see any other animals. I just wanted to go get him because I already knew he was mine. I still have picture.

It was just me and Boo. We took care of each other.

He wasn’t supposed to get sick like this. He is a really young cat. But he got a growth on his nose. The vets couldn’t tell what was causing it. He was fine with it for years and years, but then it got worse. I took care of him every day to make him as comfortable as possible. It was almost a year after what the vet said it would be.

He will always be here with me.

Ayo definitely was a very special one. He was a part of my family from his first days - we picked him out of the litter and then once he was 9 weeks old we got to take him home. He was with us a long time, I was only 12 when we got him so he was by my side and my partner in crime as I grew up. He had some serious health issues from day one so honestly I’m so grateful that we got 17 years with him, although it definitely took a lot of effort to keep him healthy, happy, and comfortable. It was all worth it though, worth it to hear his loud Siamese yowl every morning and night at dinner time, worth it when he would slowly crawl into your lap and start purring as soon as you looked at him (and usually drooling too, haha), worth it to see him playing papa bear to our other cats and snuggling up with them (I’ve got 3 others and they all miss him too)... He always made my day better, even on days when he did things he shouldn’t have. 😂

He got the nickname Listerine Cat because Ayo, as much as I love him, could be very dumb when it came to eating things. As in, he would literally try to eat everything and anything he could, including a Listerine Strip he yanked straight off my finger. He was begging so I made the dumb choice to hold it out to him so he could smell it, a sort of, “See? It’s nothing you want, stop whining” thing. I overestimated his intelligence because he licked the thing right off my finger before I could even react. He started foaming at the mouth and I called the vet in a panic, naturally. She told me not to worry, the foam was just excessive saliva and that he would be totally fine. Once I realized that he’d be okay, the situation became very funny. Here I had this beautiful cat who was just dribbling foamy saliva everywhere and looking absolutely ridiculous. I took a video of it and posted it to Twitter and from that point onwards, all my Twitter followers started referring to Ayo as Listerine Cat. 

One of the photos I included in my little memorial post was a screencap from the video - felt only right to include what was one of his most memorable moments.  

He was quite the character. 

When I got Bear  he was in a shelter in Georgia. There were many cats online at the shelter site that looked like him closer to me in Tampa but something about him told me he was to be my cat. The shelter could not fly him to me so I had about given up when the shelter called me back and said that they had some people coming up from Gainesville Florida to get a puppy and they could ask them if they would bring him as far as Gainesville if I could meet the people there. I told them yes. The people brought him to me at a hotel in Gainesville. He had been riding for eight hours or more in a car with strangers and a dog. I figured when they took him out of the carrier he would hide under the bed because most cats do that even without that much stress. But they open the carrier and he jumped right up on the bed next to me and he immediately started kneading on my arm.

Then the people left and he got behind my head on the bed and started cleaning my hair and then he laid on my chest and he went to sleep like he had been my cat 400 years… even the people that brought him to me thought it was strange how he just jumped up like that like he already knew me.

My cat teddy bear who I had gotten in 1983 and who died in 2001 at age 18 looked just like Bear. I don’t know if I believe it or not but the people in India believe that if your pet really loves you and you really love your pet when they pass away they will find a way to come back to you in the form of another animal or pet. I don’t know if that’s true but if it ever was it would have been the transition with Teddy Bear and Bear. Even when we got home teddy bear would never eat his food if it was not up on the counter. I put Bears food on the floor and he sniffed it and walked away and I thought well he’s probably not hungry after the long trip so I put his food up on the counter and I turned around and he jumped up there and he was eating it in the exact spot Teddy used to eat. He would only eat up there also just like Teddy. It was very strange.

I loved him for himself though,I never thought that he was a replacement teddy bear.

Jeff and Rachele said goodbye to Finnegan on January 24, 2018 — less than a month after losing their Lea.

We thought it was just depression from loosing Lea.  He started snapping at our puppy when they would wrestle after Lea passed. We thought he was just depressed. Then last Thursday night we felt the lumps in his throat. We made an emergency trip to the vet Friday morning.  She suspected cancer. We got a confirmation from pathology yesterday afternoon.  

We considered starting prednisone today but he is doing so bad we are not sure we’re not hours from losing him. He’s old and we don’t think that it makes sense to try to save him only to go through this all again soon anyway.  

We are devastated.