It was back in June of 2001. I had just moved to Ventura and heard a meow sound on the back porch. Staring at me with wide open eyes was a cat that looked scruffy, soooo hungry, yet heart-warming at the same time.
Although I was cat-less at the time, I am a cat person at heart and always have a few cans of cat food in the house. Just in case . . .
The cat munched it down in less than a minute and asked for another one. Meoooow!

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A bit shy in the beginning, the little tiger warmed up to me quickly, and only a couple of days later formally adopted me. A visit at the local veterinarian revealed that he was a male, about 6 years old at the time. Obviously he was very friendly, and to this day it remains a mystery why and how he showed up on my doorstep. Did his owner pass away? Was he abandoned?
Since I couldn't understand him and didn't know his real name, I named him Kat.

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The years passed and Kat remained the friendliest cat you can imagine. He liked to take a nap on his cat tree . . .

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. . . in his outdoor bed on the porch . . .

. . . and enjoyed stretching out on the hot concrete in front of the garage or the sidewalk.

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When a feral cat had a litter under our porch, Kat adopted the sole survivor of it. We named her "Little Girl" which in retrospective is kind of funny, as she grew to become bigger than Kat himself. Although Little Girl never became trusty enough to turn into a real house cat, she and Kat would cuddle up at night and sleep in the house.

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Then, in 2007, when Little Girl didn't come home and was nowhere to be found, Kat changed. Obviously he was missing her a lot, and he seemed to be heartbroken.

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Meanwhile 13 years old, we rarely watched him play with his catnip-filled toys anymore, but when we did, it was always entertaining and made us smile!

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When Chihuahua Chloe joined our family, Kat learned to deal with the jealous little dog. Being "the man" in the house, he mostly ignored her, but on occasion they both claimed their favorite place in blissful harmony, whether in joining daughter Carissa on the couch . . .

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. . . or stretching out on top of me.

Then, on Sunday, July 6, 2008, Kat didn't come home. We searched everywhere, put up flyers, searched more, until on Wednesday the 9th the pastor of the church across the street from our house informed us that he found a cat like ours next to the church's trash bin. We opened the dumpster and found Kat in a black plastic trash bag. Apparently he had been hit by a car while we were out to the movies, watching Wall-E. While the emotional pain of losing a friend is almost unbearable, I'm glad we found him and had the chance to bury him in our back yard, the place he loved and called home.

Kat, you have been a part of our family for so long. We'll always love and miss you.
Farewell, olde friend!

Created on Thursday, July 10, 2008.