RIP Riley 1994-2010

One of the sweetest, goofiest cats that ever was crossed that proverbial Rainbow Bridge today. Dan and I held him in our arms as our vet administered the injection. Riley never squirmed or even grumbled in the least. Man, are we ever going to miss this little fuzzy guy.

Riley and his brother Jake were born in an Iowa barn on July 4, 1994. I had placed a notice on the bulletin board at work: Free Home to a Good Cat. Before noon, I had a dozen or so offers, but most of them were for older cats, and we wanted a kitten. The winner was the guy who came to my house the next Saturday morning, a cat carrier in hand and his young daughter in tow. They set the carrier down on our front lawn, and out raced this tan and white kitten, straight into the bushes. The little girl chased after him. "Come back here, Riley!" she scolded, and grabbed him. Riley immediately started sucking on her fingers. "He likes to do this," she said.

"He looks like a Riley," I said, and the name stuck. They had brought three kittens, from two litters both born on the 4th. We didn't want to separate Riley and his littermate, but we couldn't take on THREE kittens, so we kept the brothers. It took us several days to come up with a name for Jake.

Riley and Jake moved with us to Arkansas in the spring of 1995. It was some time after we moved into the house we have now that we heard a strange noise coming from my sewing room. I jumped out of bed to find Riley in the hallway, blood pouring out of his mouth. I thought he had swallowed a needle or something, but it turned out he had gotten tangled up in the thread on my sewing machine, somehow got it in his mouth and wrapped around his tongue. It frightened him; he jumped off, and it nearly cut his tongue in two. We called our vet (these things never happen during the day, or during the week), and Dr. Reed rushed in and performed emergency surgery to save Riley and his almost severed tongue. From that point on, when Riley yawned, his tongue curled up a little sideways. Just one of his endearing traits.

Riley got along with everyone. He was a laid-back dude. Long and lanky, very muscular in his heyday, Riley had the downiest fur I've ever felt on a short-haired cat. He still liked to suck on your hand, up until about a year ago, when he began to have problems with his thyroid and would have ulcers in his throat. We gave him pills and steroid shots, but his decline soon began to show. He began to have trouble eating, and his jaws would grind, almost like he had TMJ or something when he ate. He began to have trouble keeping food down, and he lost down to just over five pounds.

He maintained his good humor right up to the end. Last night, he couldn't keep anything down, and Dan held him in his lap most of the night. We didn't sleep at all last night, knowing that it would be our last with the old boy. We cuddled him the best we knew how, and at about a quarter of eight this morning, we wrapped him in a soft blankie for the last time.

You had a good run, Riley. I hope Ceiling Cat has already met you at the Purrly Gates with a dish of stinkyfish gooshy food and a bag of catnip. We loved you, son.