Louie, 1999-2007

My cat Louie died today. He was 7.


I got Louie on December 5. He was only 8 weeks old, a skinny little ball of crazy kitten.

My beloved Pomeranian had been killed that Thanksgiving. I felt like I was drowning in a sea of grief, and I decided that a kitten might ease some of my pain.

I went to the shelter with the goal in mind of getting a black female kitten. I was in love with my brother's glossy ebony cat, and I wanted one just like her. When I got to the shelter, they had apparently had a bumper crop of black kittens. There were something like eight to choose from.

Meanwhile, my brother, who came with me to help me choose, took Louie out of his cage. After playing with him for a while, he said I should look at him because he was such a nice cat. I wasn't all that interested – I wanted a solid-colored cat and was not fond of his black-and-white coloring. But I held him a bit. The other kittens were happy to be held for a little while, but then they wanted to get down. Louie snuggled in my arms and fell asleep. When I tried to put him back in his cage, he struggled and cried piteously and plaintively tapped at my hand with his paw through the bars.

I was hooked.

I cried all the way home with him that day. I was still so sad about my little dog, and yet so filled with a sense of meaning in all of this...that this cat coming home with me got to do so only because of the horrible thing that happened, and how wonderful this day was, with that kitten's whole life ahead of him. And I cried because I knew that one day I'd be saying goodbye to him too.


Louie was a darling kitten, the most affectionate I've ever seen. Almost every picture I have of him shows him curled up on someone's lap or shoulder or even their head. I had a hard time finding pictures of him alone to post here.


He grew up into a rough-and-tumble little tomcat. He still loved to sit in my lap and to mess with his kitty roommate. We went through a rough patch of occasional biting and scratching for a couple of years in the middle. Some people thought I should give him away, but what they didn't understand was that I loved him, even if he could be mean. He could also be very sweet, and he was my baby that I had raised from a tiny kitten, and whatever he was, I felt like I was responsible for it.

Over time he grew out of it, and the last few years the cat that I had seen in the kitten emerged. He loved to sit in my lap when I watched TV. If I had to get up, I could lift him in a blanket, place him down on the chair, and then pick him up and place him in my lap again when I came back, and he'd be perfectly content. He loved people and always ran to greet them. He loved to play in water, and he'd do anything to get some Fancy Feast. He loved to chase little foam balls and climb on the cat tree and drape himself over sofa arms. He loved me and would wail every time I stepped out of the house. He purred when I talked to him and had the brightest green eyes and the pinkest little nose and the perfect tuxedo coloring that I could finally see was so beautiful. He was always so full of life, and he always seemed so happy.

I loved him.