Let me begin this with the most important truth: Leo was the best cat. Ever. In all of the history of the world, there was never a better cat. I doubt there can be a better one ever.
In September 2007, I went outside to get the mail. Across the street, I saw a cat. I said, "Hello kitty!" and the cat came across the street to meet me. He was friendly, so I went in and got some kibble, and fed him while hanging out with him. I told Gale that we had a visitor, and she came out and met him as well. He was a smaller (or so I thought) black cat, with some small white tufts on his fur. A starling cat, if you will.
The next day, he showed up at about the same time, and we fell into a pattern: a few minutes of food, and affection, and then I'd go in. Twice during this period, he hurt me: he got excited and rolled on his back, and I petted his chest and belly; he then grabbed me with his forepaws, and raked along my arm with his hind legs, scratching me. Each time he did this, I said "Ow!" and took the kibble dish and went inside. This is important.
After a couple of days of him showing up, I got a cat collar with a tag that said "LOST CAT CALL ". Nobody called, and the collar was gone on the third day. Which made it a day longer than I'd expected it to last.
After a week of this, I called a local vet and made an appointment for him. We'd taken to calling the cat Little Boy Cat, partially as an accurate description, and partially as a reference to the tv show Psych. The night before, I brought him into the house, put him in one of the bathrooms with water (but no food), and then he went in the next day for neutering, vaccinations, general exam, etc.
We had planned on letting him go again. This plan did not work out: while recovering, he was the friendliest, sweetest cat I'd ever met. He purred constantly, he curled up, he went to *great* effort to not use his claws on us. We decided to keep him, and after ruling out "Bagheera" as a name (I kept mispronouncing it), I settled on Leo Pard, Beau Chat. The fact that this was around Halloween factored into us not wanting to let him outside again.
Amusingly, a month or so later, I got a call from San Jose Animal Control, saying I needed to pay his license; I told them that I'd simply gotten him fixed and vaccinated because he was a stray cat, and that we no longer had "Little Boy Cat."
He was about a year old, they told us, so we set his birthday as Oct 1, 2006. Since he was young, he kept trying to be playful with our other two cats, Selena and Norman. Neither one wanted to play -- Selena was anti-social (didn't even like Norman), and Norman was too old to be playful. So in March, we went to HSSV, and picked out another cat: there was an 8 month old girl cat, also black, named Polly. She came home with us, and the next couple of weeks had some careful introductions.
It turned out that Leo was fascinated by kittens. He loved Polly almost immediately, with very little hissing, and no fighting. My favourite memory from this time involves her trying to fight, and him deliberately putting his paw on her forehead, to tell her "This is not acceptable." As I described it to Gale, Leo was teaching Polly how to cat.
He did so very successfully, by the way, as Polly has turned into a very social and sweet cat, with some neuroses. But that's for another obituary.
But Polly also came with an upper respiratory infection, and she passed it onto Leo. Who got it far worse than she did; this is how I learned how disgusting it is when a congested cat sneezes. It was viral, so there wasn't a lot to do; we ended up putting him in a bathroom with the shower going on hot. And the stinkiest wet food we could find. Possibly because of this, Leo liked being in the bathroom, and would go in there on his own, and not complain if he got locked in. For a while, he would also hop into the shower with me, although I'm still not sure if that was because he wanted to be around me, or if he liked the humidity or the steam.
We got a pair of foster kittens at one point. Leo continued to be fascinated by kittens, but we'd been told to keep the normal cats separated from the fosters. We did not foster again, because of this (it was simply too difficult to keep two separated cat households).
We gained Dusty; I lost Selena, and then Norman, which is something I've gone into length elsewhere. I got a new cat very soon, named Barry, which is also something I mentioned elsewhere. During this process, Polly became bosscat after Norman's departure, and took advantage of all the privileges from this. But she let Leo sleep next to me, because she loved him.
During the time Leo was with me, he never bit. I got a couple of scratches, but not because he tried to scratch me, only because I needed to trim his claws. He was mortified if he thought he hurt me.
For not long enough, he was very, very food-oriented: I got him to stand up for treats, and any indignity he suffered could be forgiven if I gave him some treats afterwards. He also had the widest vocabulary of any cat I ever met: he could sound like you stepped on his tail, or just a normal meow, or meow-and-purr, and many others. Eventually I figured out that most of the painful-sounding ones were his way of getting attention and/or food.
One day, I noticed a dark spot on his eye. I took him to the vet, and they said it was probably nothing, but did some bloodwork. The results were bad: his liver enzymes were very, very bad. We did some more tests, and ended up going to Sage Centers, who were specialists. This was in July 20111. Leo got xrayed, sonogrammed, endoscoped, and eventually a laparoscopic biopsy. This was all inconclusive. They then wanted to do a full abdominal investigative surgery. I declined at that point; in retrospect, it would not have done anything. They told me it was probably cancer, and they probably wouldn't be able to do more than slow it down.
By this point, we'd had Leo for 4 years. He clearly loved me more than anything except being fed. And he slept with me, and helped me sleep: he curled up next to me, started purring, and -- as far as I could tell -- just kept purring until I got up. And he purred *loudly*. (So loudly that I'd been asked to leave the exam room at vets sometimes, because they couldn't hear his heartbeat.)
Things more or less stayed in that pattern for years. Until we lost Barry, which broke my heart and soul, and Gale got Scotty. Who either had a URI, or stressed Leo out enough that his returned. And this was the decline for him: he stopped eating as much. Every day starting in September 2018 was an attempt to get him eat more. There were vet visits, shower steams, a dozen different kinds of canned and dry foods. He lost weight. Then we moved to Beaverton, and the stress happened again, and he lost more weight. (So did Polly, who had been diagnosed with intestinal cancer shortly after Barry had.)
The vet in Beaverton said it clearly wasn't cancer; most likely some sort of autoimmune disorder, and I became so very angry at Sage Centers, who never suggested that, because apparently it's so generic a term they didn't like to use it.
His eating habits went up and down, as did his weight. We had a dental procedure, and he lost one of his vampire-like canines. Which then made it painful for him to eat even more. He went from a 14 pound cat at his peak, to being under 7 pounds.
I spent two months force feeding him. Combined with multiple medications, he kept food down most of the time, but... he had no desire to eat. And continued to lose weight.
A few days ago, he had a very bad night. Since then, he stopped letting me know he was hungry, and hasn't walked out of the bedroom. Last night, I didn't feed him, or give him his medicines.
The vet explained that it was time.
He was the best cat that ever was or ever will be. He deserved better than me.
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