12 Good Years

In the summer of 1999 I graduated from law school, took and passed the bar, and moved back home.  I wanted a cat really bad and as luck would have it my Aunt and Uncle's neighbors had a pregnant kitty.

When I went to pick, I thought FOR SURE I was going to take one of the black kittens with green eyes and name her Scarlett, but then I saw the runt of the litter and I was smitten.  He was the tiniest silver and gray kitty ever, so I snatched him up and named him Emmitt (after Emmitt Smith of the Dallas Cowboys...who I would meet in 2006 and exclaim, "I named my cat after you!" like a crazy woman....)

As soon as he had his own food source Emmitt was a runt no more!  When Emmitt and I moved in with Greg and his golden retriever, Griffey (I thought it was pretty fateful that we had both named our pets after sports stars...) he REALLY packed on the L-Bs.  We would wake in the middle of the night to the sound of Emmitt eating Griffey's food.  At his fattest he was probably 23 pounds of loving, purring kitty.

Last summer he was sick and I thought we were going to have to put him down, but he rallied and we got another good year out of him.  However, about 10 days ago I discovered a huge, hard lump over his eye.  In the days that followed he lost a significant amount of weight.  For the last three days he hadn't come out of our basement, and I went to see him last night and he would not purr.  Greg got home to check him out, no doubt thinking I was exaggerating, and even he was a little teary-eyed when Emmitt wouldn't purr for him either.

So today, Greg took Emmitt to the vet and now he's gone.  He was obviously very sick and I am confident it was the kind thing to do, but that doesn't make it any better.

Good-bye, sweet fat Emmitt.  You will be missed.

He loved to sleep on his back and just splay out