I haven’t posted in a while because I have had a lot of stuff going on in my life. That culminated today in having to put my kitty Cookie to rest after her seizure episodes returned with intensity and would not respond to any treatment. I have always viewed being a cat parent as a duty from the beginning of their life to the very end, and I was there holding Cookie as she went to her final rest.

I was there for Cookie’s entire life. She came to me as a kitten only two weeks old, one of the fosters that Beth and I were taking care of. Her eyes weren’t even open yet when we took her in.

Cookie was one of five siblings that we took in, along with their mother, Snuggles. They were an adorable litter; the others included Fifi Marie, Alvin, Theodore, and Rascal, the grey kitten. Eventually, we would adopt Cookie and Rascal.

Of all the kittens, Cookie looked the most like her mom, and they were veritable twins. I managed to get one photo of the two of them together before Snuggles was adopted.

Both Cookie and Rascal looked adorably goofy as kittens, and I think that’s part of how we ended up adopting them. The other three kittens were adopted immediately, but Cookie and Rascal ended up sticking around through several adoption events, and even got temporarily sent out to a home before they were sent back for causing a ruckus at night (like kittens).

It was at the final adoption event that I finally broke down. We were at a PetSmart, and we had brought Cookie and Rascal to the event. They actually hadn’t seen us for a while, because they had gotten spayed and neutered, but wherever I went in the store in sight, they were on that side of the cage looking at me. At that point, I said “if nobody adopts them at the end of the day, I’m taking them home.” And I did.

One thing I learned from living with Cookie is that tuxedo cats are, on average, a little bit crazy. Cookie showed her lively side right from the beginning, happily clawing my socks in play.

She had no problem climbing on me as she saw fit, even from an early age.

I can see so much of the cat she would become in these kitten photos, just a wonderfully silly ball of energy. She also showed off her bendy nature as a kitten, in a pose that she would adopt for years.

The adult picture is even the one I used in my book on Falling Felines, to point out that cats are not rigid bodies.

She even went to greater extremes, with her body so contorted that it looked like she had twisted a full 180 degrees. She was comfortable, though, and that was how she relaxed.

Sometimes her contortions were so odd that I struggled to actually identify the different parts of her body, as in the following photo.

Cookie seemed determined to find the most extreme positions to relax in. I have so many pictures of her sleeping oddly.

There’s also this one, from 2017.

Cookie also seemed to take some weird pride in doing activities in the most contorted poses possible, as this short video shows.

She also wasn’t afraid to find weird places to sleep or just hang out, like all cats.

Perhaps my favorite photo of Cookie, and one that went viral online a few times, shows so much about Cookie’s personality while ironically showing very little of her. I think it captures her personality perfectly.

Later in life, after 2022, Cookie lost her hearing, possibly due to her long-term brain issues. She became much more sedate and ended up sleeping a lot more, which I largely attributed to old age; regardless, she was always comfortable and happy. But looking back at my photos, I remembered other aspects of her personality that had slipped away from me through the years. One of those is how much of a lap cat she used to be. She was always happy to curl up with me, either on the sofa or in bed.

Another is how much she used to cuddle with the other kitties in the house, even from a very early age.

Though she stopped doing this regularly in her later years, she returned to it at the very end. When her anti-seizure medication seemed to be working at first, she picked up some of her old behaviors and seemed like a kitten again.

The other thing I had forgotten about is how much she loved to play. She loved her toys and would play with them regularly.

Fortunately, I have a few videos of her playing to remember her by. She was a fierce player, and would attack her toys with gusto, in my opinion very much a “crazy tuxedo cat” behavior.

Remarkably, this is something else she came back to in her very last days, as the medication gave her a temporary reprieve. I got to play with her and interact with her like a kitten again one last time, for which I will always be grateful.

The last thing I will always remember about Cookie is her smile. People often say that cats are hard to read emotionally because they don’t express feelings in the same way that people do, but Cookie always had a characteristic smile on her face when doing something silly or feeling mischievous. I’ve shown a number of examples of this throughout this memorial, but here are a couple more.

It was raining heavily at the vet’s office when I left, but I hardly noticed it. I walked out into the rain without an umbrella and was just shaken thinking that she was truly gone. But she left me a lifetime of happiness and memories that I will always cherish. I love you and miss you, Cookie.

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