R.I.P. HellCat

We lost HellCat on Monday.  At least we think we did, although we have not discovered his body yet. HellCat had been ailing for about two months--mostly we noticed he lost weight, but the last week or so, he was really weak and slept a lot, so we figured something was wrong.

The story of Hell Cat of the Pacific, to use his full name, begins when we moved into Fartwood Manor five years ago. At the same time we were moving in, the guy across the street was moving out, and abandoned his cat when he did.

We would see this little cat wandering around....he was pretty small and had a pronounced limp. My neighbors were feeding the little guy and one of them had a little "cat house" on her porch where he slept. Pretty soon he started hanging around our house too. 

We started calling him HellCat, while the neighbors dubbed her Starkesha. We couldn't really figure out what the gender was. The limp we noticed was due to one front leg being shorter than the other, so when he'd sit on his haunches, his paw would be raised. His tail was shorter than average too. But he had the prettiest eyes! It looked like he was wearing eyeliner.

As far as cats go, HellCat was lacking a little in the brain power, but that just added to his cute personality. Since he was semi-feral, he wouldn't let us pick him up and barely tolerated petting. Mainly he'd show up for food and hang around in the yard. He would just appear at the patio door and just sit there and look in the window until someone noticed him.

About two years ago he was bold enough to come into the house. Any time I would cook chicken, he would come running and yowl at the door, then he would sit under the butcher block while I did my prep. During the winter months, he'd come in and we'd let him sleep inside. He just started wanting to do that again recently.

In early October we noticed he was skinnier than usual, but then looked better a few weeks later. But last week he went downhill fast. This weekend he would come in the house in the morning and sleep all day and hardly ate a thing. He was so weak. On Monday, Dale came home for lunch and saw HellCat laying in the sun at the neighbor's house. That was the last time any one saw him.

Here are a few photos showing the many faces of HellCat of the Pacific.

King of the Garden--

I never saw a cat sleep on his back before.
Asleep in the house
Really sick on Saturday
Striking a sexy pose