See You Around, Joe

Just so you know, there is no happy end to this post.

Near the end of September 2015, my two-almost-three-year-old son and his neighbor friend tracked down a kitten in an empty lot across the street. We’d heard him crying for a while, but hoped his mother would come get him. There were a lot of strays around, and we were used to hearing cats cry. But this one was apparently abandoned, because even after a full night, mother never came back.

So, we decided to take him in.

The vet we took him to for all those initial things you have to do when adopting a stray cat told us he was probably about three weeks old, and would be a big ‘un.

The vet was right. Joe grew big and robust, topping out at 7.7 kilos (almost 17 pounds). He wasn’t really fat, just a big old cat.

He was also oddly delicate. Lots of rashes, lots of stomach issues, very easily stressed into going bald.

And he could be a real asshole.

He used to demand to climb up onto my shoulders, then decide he hated being so high and would attack my head.

He could also be really loving, especially in his later years. He became my lap cat, probably because no one else’s lap in the house was big enough to curl up on.

The past couple of months of 2025, he became particularly cuddly. He would demand lap time in the morning, crying at me until I sat on the couch with a blanket in my lap for him to curl up in. He would demand my wife hold him at night before bed.

And then, at the very end of the year, he got weak. His appetite declined. He barely drank anything. We tried all kinds of things and finally found he would lick tuna paste snacks, which we gave him as often as we could. When the vet’s office finally opened last Monday, we took him in.

The vet took one look at his pale gums and said he had bad anemia. Blood tests showed his red cell levels were dangerously low, so we rushed him to the big pet hospital. More blood tests and x-rays showed tons of problems. An enlarged heart. A tumor near his kidneys. But his blood work was the most worrying. It indicated he probably had an underlying marrow issue, but he was too weak to handle the tests to pinpoint it.

So, we had to decide if we would look for a blood donor to boost him back to levels where we could do the tests needed to consider treatment.

Which, come on. That’s not only an enormous undertaking, it would be torture for Joe. He HATED the vet. In fact, the blood tests were so stressful he passed out and had to be given oxygen. So, we knew that we were looking at the end of his life, and the terrible choice of whether to put him to sleep.

But he took that burden from us. He stopped eating entirely the next day, and the day after that, Wednesday, January 7, 2026, he curled up on a cushion in front of a warm, sunny window, and went to sleep. My wife, my son, and I were there with him. We told him he was loved. We thanked him. We said goodbye. We wept. We weep.

God, I miss my buddy. But I am so glad we got to have lap time almost to the very end.

Love you, Joe. See you on the other side.