After 16 beautiful, love-filled years, we had to say goodbye to my beloved baby boy.
I got Fortunato after begging my mom for a cat (she's allergic, but I'm her baby, so she said yes) and coming home with two—at the adoption fair there was a buy one kitten, get a black kitten free deal. They had 3-4 litters of black kittens and black cats struggle to get adopted... although secretly, I always planned to get a black cat for exactly that reason. He came home with me with his adoptive sister, Ion—an orange tabby—back in 2009. I was a freshman in high-school when I first got and fell in love with this boy.
He was a chunky kitten named Colby, and I renamed him to an Edgar Allen Poe character. It had been just a bit after reading the Black Cat in my English class for Halloween. I figured naming him after Pluto, the titular Black Cat, would've been a bit of bad luck considering the course of the story, but I wanted him to be my little gothic kitty cat. And he was. He was perfect.
He was a lazy, happy boy who loooooved to cuddle. When I left for college in 2013, I cried all night about leaving my pets, including him, and he let me hold him and rest my head on him all through my sobs and further through the night as I slept. When I woke up, he was still there, rested under my head and purring.
In the last few years of his life he became very thin. He lost his vision, then developed his spooky looking cataract in one eye, and was having stomach issues that ultimately became complicated enough to take him away from this world. But even before the very last few days with us he was happy. He still loved to cuddle, to curl up into a happy, purring little circle. Everywhere in my house I look and see reminders of where he used to be, tucked tight into a comfy little circle, slowly breathing. He crashed suddenly, although we knew he was sick—he had been on some months of stomach treatment and he had been doing better, more active, but within the past week or so he kept dropping weight, couldn't eat, and very suddenly could barely even walk. It was sudden and scary and sad, but the right thing to do was make sure he didn't suffer. He was the sweetest boy on the planet, and the last thing he deserved at all was pain and suffering. We spent hours and hours with him today, just holding him and stroking him. Letting him know, as always, that he was absolutely precious to us.
I didn't think I would be saying my forever goodbye to him today. I thought I had a good one or two years left with him. However, I know that no amount of time would have ever, ever been enough to spend with this delightful, loving, funny little creature. Even if he lived to be 30, letting him go then would hurt just as much as it hurts now, if not more. He was my baby for more than half my lifetime. He was my little angel. My old man princess. I will always, always miss him.
He loved me so much. And I love him. I will always love him.
