Purrfect Feline Friends
New Jersey
Phone: 732-928-2118

Stinky

June 1993-May 12, 2006

'Just a black cat, shorthaired. Nothing special. So what's all the fuss?'

I kept thinking that was what the vet techs and vets thought every time I brought Neville in for his medicine and fluids. But to me he was my heart and soul wrapped up in one little warm body.

Our paths crossed thirteen summers ago in July when I spotted this tiny black kitten trying to get in the middle of my husband's volleyball game in Shirlington, Virginia. I could not get him because everytime I approached he fit through the chain link fence and I had to run around to the other brambly side and we went back and forth like this for days. I borrowed a live trap and ended up with an opossum. I finally got him during a monsoon and thereafter, he was always terrified of lightning and thunder.

When we got home I put him in the bathroom and the aroma that emanated from this small being was so large it was hard to fathom he was capable of such pungency, so he got the nickname Stinky. At the time, my husband was on a trip and kept asking me if I had found a home yet. "I am looking, I am looking." By the fifth day when he asked, I said, "Yes, indeed, I found him a great home, ours!"

Stinky was fearless. He thought our big red chow/goldenX was his mother. When our daughter went through her colicky phase, everyone ran in terror except Stinky who lay down right next to her unfazed by the screeching. (I will never forget that he was bigger than Emma!) He lived the life of Riley. Thought he ruled our neighborhood and made sure all the neighborhood cats knew it. He never got along with our other cat Nigel and they divided the house upstairs/downstairs and had a healthy dislike of each other that endured until the very last days!

On the weekends between Washington and Delaware, we left the cats b/c we thought they'd be happier on their own turf (and avoid the car ride) and our awesome neighbors lovingly looked after them. In hindsight had I moved them to Delaware sooner, I would have noticed that Stinky had lost quite a bit of weight. After a few weeks when he seemed to loose interest in eating, I took him to the vet and he was diagnosed with periportal hepatitis--liver failure. Despite taking several medicines daily, he continued to loose weight and was in a great deal of pain. He seemed to give up the fight and as much as I wanted to keep going until he was better, I knew that he was never going to get better.

I will miss my little heart and soul. He really was not just any ordinary black cat.

Denise