A Farewell to Pudge

We lost our beloved kitty, Pudge, on Wednesday, July 21, after enjoying 8 years with him.  He had been sick for about the past month, but had recovered from those problems, and in the end, it was pneumonia that got him.  For those who knew much about Pudge, you know that it was really a miracle that his 9 lives lasted that long.  I was certain that he would end up killing himself - just the crazy things he did.  I wanted to take a moment to share some of my memories of him with our blog followers.

For those who may not know that story, we were not Pudge's first owners.  About the same time I adopted Lucas from the Humane Society in Chattanooga (in the fall of 2002), my sister and her roommates adopted a cat they named Whistles....why Whistles, I have no idea.  It was odd we didn't know that the other one was getting a cat, and they ended up both being orange, male kitties.  Whistles and his cousin Lucas got along from the start.  Although Whistles would steal Lucas' mice and growl at him when he would try to get them back, Lucas didn't mind, and they became friends.  They had such a fun time whenever they were at Grandma and Grandpa's house together.  Unfortunately, Mandy and her roommates failed to pay their pet deposit at their apartment and got caught, so they had to find a new home for Whistles.  They called Aunt Erin, and without too much thought, I agreed to adopt Whistles.  Jeremy couldn't stand the name, so we renamed him 'Pudge.'  Pudge was just what we needed.  Lucas would wake me up in the middle of the night biting my legs, wanting to play.  This kind of behavior gets old in a hurry, so it was so nice when he had a buddy to play with at night.  We became a family, the three of us, and they would appear with me on Christmas cards and I would sign cards from Erin, Lucas, and Pudge.

From the start, Pudge was always the trouble maker.  He would jump onto the kitchen countertop (where he was not allowed) all the time!  If I didn't happen to see him up there, he would meow to alert me of his bad behavior.  He was squirted with water many times for this, but it did not seem to help.  He was also my lap kitty early on; he had the softest fur and the best motor.  He was a very lovey cat.

Another favorite memory of mine was his nighttime hallucinations.  The cat would run as fat as he could (despite being fat, he was very fast!) across the house, and would jump up the door frames and slide down.  He would also do a bark/meow thing which was the strangest sound I've ever heard a cat make.

When we lived in Versailles, we were playing with him with his mice that rattle (they had to rattle or they were no good) and he got so excited when we threw it up the stairs that he rounded the corner and ran straight into one of the stairs!  It was hysterical but scary at the same time.  I'm guessing he probably got a concussion from that one.  As I recall, he may have been under the influence of catnip at the time...which he also loved.

Another crazy Pudge moment was when we went to Gatlinburg with my dad's family.  We were going to be going to Tennessee to visit family after that, so we brought our cats with us.  The cabin we stayed in was 2 floors, but the main room was open all the way up.  It had some beams that ran across the top of the room.  In the middle of the night, Pudge decided that it would be a good idea to jump from the landing on to one of those beams.  He did so successfully, but his luck eventually ran out and he fell from the rafters, almost onto my aunt I believe.  I'm sure he landed on his feet, but that had to hurt.

Pudge also loved to eat things - anything.  He used to eat strings and I would find them when I would be scooping the litter pan.  Gross but true.  He also loved to chew through wires.  He and Lucas both devoured a good bit of speaker wire in their days.  Pudge would also chew on electrical wires.  One of his favorite ways to wake me up on Saturday mornings (usually if being lovable didn't work) was to chew on the wires from the lamp or the alarm clock.  He knew that the threat of him electrocuting himself would be enough to at least get me out of bed, and perhaps even to feed them.  He also chewed the wire from our baby monitor.  It is spliced back together in 3 places.  On another occasion, Pudge ate some jalapeno jelly that had been left in our sink during a progressive dinner that our Sunday School class had.  That night, we were up with him until about 3am cleaning up vomit, searching on the web to see if we needed to take him to an emergency animal hospital.  Another thing that he ate once was a feminine napkin wrapper.  It had been opened and disposed of in the garbage can in the bathroom.  He dug it out of the garbage (another favorite past time of his), chewed, and swallowed it until eventually the whole thing was down.  He vomited it back up and it was rolled up life a roll of wrapping paper.  He vomited up a lot of stuff...

Pudge was also our inspector.  Any box that came into the house, he was sure to inspect and test for sturdiness.  If he could lay on top of it, then we knew it was a good box.  He loved having Cora's nursery furniture boxes to lay on before we got stuff set up.  He also liked to make sure that there wasn't anything unsafe in any cabinets, drawers, or closets.  He learned really early in his kittenhood to open cabinet doors.  He eventually moved on to closet doors, and his latest was Cora's dresser drawers.  He would slide open the second or third drawer up and jump on in.  He made quite a mess of her clothes making his nest just right.

Perhaps my favorite memory of him was while I was pregnant.  Something about my pregnant belly made him so happy.  He would sit in my lap for as long as I would let him and snuggle up with my belly.  A lot of times he would have his bottom half in my lap and curl up and put his top half on top of my belly.  He would also 'make cakes' - as we call it (aka: knead dough) - on my belly.  She even kicked him a couple of times, but he didn't mind.  He just loved her in the womb.  Not as crazy about her once she was out.  :)

Pudge had just been in trouble for getting on top of the cabinets (That's right, on top of the cabinets, not on the countertop.  His bad behavior escalated :)) on Tuesday.  Wednesday morning, he just wasn't acting right, and his eyes seem to be constantly dilated.  When I took him to the vet at 9:30, I never would have imagined that he would have gone from not looking or acting quite right to struggling to breathe because of the fluid in his lungs.  Poor guy was just wheezing when we were transferring him from the regular vet to the internist's office.  His body temperature and oxygen saturation had dropped by the time we got there.  They had him in an oxygen chamber and had blankets on him trying to warm him.  He was still on 2 different antibiotics from when he had been sick before, but unfortunately, neither of those is effective with pneumonia.  They had given him another antibiotic in hopes that he might pull through and told us that cats with pneumonia normally do pull through 50-70% of the time.  I got to go back and see him before I left.  I just cried - even with the oxygen he was struggling to breathe.  They unzipped the oxygen chamber so I could pet him.  I rubbed his head, his ears, and his chin, and I just kept telling him how sorry I was.  So we left, and an hour later the doctor called me and said that he had really declined since I left and wanted permission to help speed up the dying process.  So, that was the end.  He isn't suffering anymore, but he's also not here to make me laugh or to make me mad, and he did a lot of both.  He won't be cuddling up with my next baby in the womb if I'm lucky enough to have another.  Poor Lucas has literally lost his best friend.  Life just won't be the same without him.  We really loved him and will miss him dearly.

Here are some pictures from over the years.  Unfortunately, I don't have any kitten pics to share - only those since we got our digital camera.

Here's a picture of me and my snuggly fella'.  This was back when we lived at the Shillito Park apartments.

This picture is from our trip to Gatlinburg.  The pool table was the choice place to lay.  He and Lucas would also occasionally bat at the balls.  We spent a very long time trying to lint roll the hair off the table.  :)

Brotherly love

Pudge was so easy going - he'd let me do anything to him!  Here he was Pudge Vader.

This is a picture from Mom & Dad's house - he matched the stripes on the comforter.  So handsome!

Sweet sleepy kitty.  He would always roll over so that you could rub his belly.  He would just purr.

Here's a good example of Pudge being where he's not supposed to be.  I'm not really sure how he managed to get up there....

Pudge and Lucas loved to snuggle on this blanket.  Best friends.

A freshly folded pile of jeans seemed like the perfect place to lay, though they were leaning a bit.  Another fun fact about Pudge, he loved to rub on your leg, especially if you were wearing black pants!

Here's Pudge helping me write a research paper

Apparently I was looking on the wrong page.

King Pudge sitting atop the nursery furniture box.

Relaxing with Hazel

He was into everything.  Here he is in a bag of baby clothes.

Peekaboo!

Checked that box out - the top would not hold him!

All the furry kids hanging with their pregnant mama.

Pudge finding a good place to lay.  He tested the weight limit of this drawer and the one above it.

Pudge also loved to lay on the changing pad and in the glider.  I decided Cora should join him.  :)