goodbye my sweet, furry friend...

This morning, with very heavy hearts, Mr. Boom and I made the very difficult decision to say goodbye to our beloved cat, Hemingway. He's been on a slow decline for the past year or so but, still had good quality of life until this past week. By last night, it was obvious that he was in pain and that we would have to help him along. Our sweet boy was far too good to us for too long to allow him to suffer. We are so grateful to the compassionate vet, Dr. Chen who was there to help us today.

I rescued Hemingway from a shelter Easter weekend of 1997. He was the craziest, liveliest cat I'd ever met. Running through my apartment sliding on the wood floors and bouncing off walls and jumping on everything (refrigerator, counters, tops of doors, top of the shower, range hood, everywhere). He was absolutely a people cat. He followed me wherever I went and loved to be on my lap.

Hemingway was smart. Too smart. He knew to knock things off surfaces in the middle of the night to wake me up for playtime or fresh water (fresh cat!). And, I easily taught him to play fetch and to roll over on command by saying "Roll over, Kitty!"

People food was his weakness. He particularly loved lunch meat and canned corn. Weird but true! Every time I opened a can of corn, he would make a bee line for the kitchen and beg for the water and a few kernels. In contrast, he hated every brand of cat treat I bought for him until just a couple of years ago when we discovered Greenies. Then, that was Mr. Boom's trick for cat bonding - a few Greenies each day.

Since we brought G home, it seemed to be Hemingway's mission to either ignore or turn his nose up at the baby. Another male invader of his domain. Funny enough, in the past two weeks, he seemed to make peace with his "little brother." In his last days, he would stand in front of G and allow himself to be pet and have handfuls of hair or an ear tugged without so much as a sound. It was as if he was asserting his role as G's first pet. Saying hello, saying goodbye.

We had a good, full 13+ years together and he will be missed terribly.

Good night, my sweet friend.