I called him "Joehead" because he loved to sit in boxes with just his head peeking over the top edge. Big boxes, small boxes, tall boxes, short boxes. It didn't matter to him. We'd put a box down and he'd jump in. I loved that about him.
No picky cat was he. He adored food. It was always his central preoccupation come about 4:30 in the afternoon each day. People say you can't train cats but that's not true. You just have to find out what motivates them. Sometimes that's hard. With Joe it was food.
Over the weekend we suddenly noticed, he wasn't eating very much. He ate a little bit of his food, but would leave most of it in the bowl and my other cat, Melchizedek would come along and finish it off. We'd seen this once or twice before over the years. No big deal. Usually at the end of winter he'd get cabin fever and be a little tired of his food. Then we gave him an extra treat of all wet canned cat food, something he just loved, and which we usually mix with the dry every couple of weeks as a change. But he still only ate a little bit.
Then we knew something was wrong. On the last day, he stopped drinking, and pretty much just laid by us. He'd lay in the living room if we were there. He slept next to the bed his last night. In his last days we spent as much time with him as we could. He was with us so long and through so much in Colorado and here in Wisconsin. He was the gentlest and friendliest cat I have ever known. He got along with other cats and dogs, loved people. He was part of my family.
We said "good-bye" to him (just in case) Tuesday morning before we left for work. When we returned, he was laying at the top of the stairs, where he used to greet us everyday coming home from work. It was as if to say goodbye. He had gone sometime in the afternoon and when we got home his body was cold.
I think I've cried a river of tears from that moment to now.
After petting him and saying our final goodbyes to him. We wrapped him in a cloth.
The evenings have still been freezing here, but that day it had been almost 60 degrees. That night, there was a full moon, the stars were out, and the air was warm. The snow had melted just that day around the flower bed in our backyard and the soil was soft. Robert dug a hole in the bed, a place Joe loved to eat catnip, sniff the garden smells, and roll in the dirt.
We buried him there.
Goodbye... My tux cat, our butler. Box cat. Joseph. I miss you.
