Puck died during the night.
We had Puck for 18 years, and he was at least 2 years when he came to us. We found him living feral in the alley behind our old house; he was diving into dumpsters, etc. He just started hanging around us, and even though we had another cat, he stayed. I took this photo of Puck on Sunday.
We suspected at the time that he was a survivor of the house down the street that had burned down; the fire was suspiscious, as were the people living there. We all figured it was a drug house from the activity going on there. After the decision to keep him, I took him into the vet to have him nuetered, but the vet said he had been neuretered and in fact, the stitches were still in him. They were old, but there. So someone had decided to have him neutered in the past six months or so. Yet no one claimed him.
Puck didn't like to be kept in the house; he always stayed right around the house, on the porch, etc. and liked to come in for visits and of course, food, but he wasn't a typical house cat. Yet he was so damn loving and affectionate! He would sit in my lap for hours, just purring and letting me pet him.
He was a real warrior; he liked to perch and sit up high; in his younger days he ran off other cats, as well as dogs.
He came with us when we moved to our present house. The past few years, he developed a bad allergy to fleas, and I became allergic to his fur, or dander. Still, I didn't care. Then he started to have bad problems with his teeth, ....basically, he just got old.
We knew he was letting go of life these past couple of years. Just his overall behavior, just getting old. Since Sunday he stopped eating, would stay outside, --- sit was clear it was his time. I had the most emotional, conflicted up and down few days; do I take him in to be "put down?" But he wasn't suffering, and it seemed a real dishonor to his spirit to take him out of the yard he loved, the outdoors and nature he was so much a part of, and have his last hours spent in an unfamilar place. . .
So we let him go. It was hard, so damn hard! Both of us knew he was going to pass away last night, so we dug a hole under the rose bush he loved to lie under, and this morning, at 5:45 a.m. when I checked, there was Puck, dead, on our porch by his water dish and little bed.
We buried him this morning.
Good bye, Puck. You were such a loving, loyal, good cat. Thank you for being in our lives.