With a very heavy heart, ladies and gentlemen… Styx.
I have some very sad news to tell everyone today. My cat of almost seventeen years, Houdini… had to be put down this morning. He apparently had another stroke sometime during the night and could no longer move, so my dad and I didn't really have any other choice. I knew this day was coming, especially after everything that's happen recently, but I thought I'd have just a little while longer before it did. I mean my cat had improved so much in the last few days that I thought he'd be with us for another year at least.
Here's a picture of Houdini that my dad took a few years back.
I remember the day when my family and I first got him from the animal shelter. I had gone there originally hoping to get a black cat, but there he was in that cage just meowing at everyone who went by, hoping that someone would take him home. My parents and I took him into this little indoor fenced area at the shelter to get to know him better and he kept escaping. My dad joked that we should call him Houdini after the famous escape artist and the name just sort of stuck, especially on the way home when he pawed at the latch of his kitty carrier. He wasn't fully grown when we first got him, but he wasn't quite a kitten either. You could say that he was more of a teenage cat.
Life with Houdini certainly had its interesting and funny moments. One time my mom had finished eating a slice of pizza and he jumped up on her lap, grabbed the crust his mouth and ran off with it he was stealing it. There was another time one even when my dad and I had come home from somewhere and Houdini had taken a packed of hamburger buns back to my room and wrestled it. Then there this one time I'll never forget when my dad left an open container of chip dip on his chair and went out to the kitchen, thinking that Houdini wouldn't touch it because it was spicy. Oh, how wrong he was.
Things just aren't going to be the same anymore now that Houdini's gone. This house is going to be a little lonely now without him underfoot. I'd say good morning to Houdini every morning and tell him goodnight when I'd go to bed. I'd say goodbye to him every time I'd leave the house and tell him hello again when I'd come home. And of course he'd usually be waiting for me or come and greet me when I did. Or at the very least he'd look at me from whatever place he was sleeping at the time. He touched my life deeply and I was very lucky to have known him.
Goodbye, Houdini.
