Our cat Pancho died last week. I was thinking that this is too early to write about it, or that maybe I shouldn’t write about it because yeah I lost another cat. But it’s my blog, so I’m going to write about it.

We adopted Pancho about 7 years ago. He was about 6 months old when we brought him home from the pound.  I understand that little black cats are not easy to adopt out. People for some reason don’t like black cats. When my wife walked by Pancho’s cage, he cocked his head, got up, meowed a greeting to her, and got her attention.

We think he must have come from a home with kids. He was very friendly and affectionate from the start, and only got sweeter as the years went by. When I came home he ran out, jumped up on the counter, and greeted me. When I got up, he did the same thing. Extremely attentive and attached, especially for a cat.  And so were we, to him.

Last Wednesday night he stumbled into the den and collapsed, crying out. He was suffering. I rushed him to the emergency vet, but there was nothing she could do. Most likely a blood clot had formed due to some heart abnormality, and gotten down into his system. He was half paralyzed, low blood pressure, low temperature, and his gums were white.  The vet gave him something for the pain, and I spent some time with him. He purred so sweetly in my arms – like he always did. He’d purr as soon as I spoke to him in the morning, or any time.  I held his head and rubbed his cheeks as the vet administered the shots and then he was gone.

I’ve got no words of wisdom for this. Life is full of joy and loss. This loss is really hard, but it is outweighed 1000 times by the joy he brought to us. But I’d be lying if I said the grief were not kind of killing me right now.

Rest easy, little buddy.