Hello. Today’s prompt makes me sad because the animal that helped inspire my veganism has been missing from my home since early Summer. He was an indoor-outdoor cat named Franz who loved to frolic outdoors and make new friends with other humans and animals alike. Our neighbors referred to him as “cat dog” because he would go on walks with us around or neighborhood, and sometimes even go on walks with the neighbors if he liked them. We don’t know exactly what happened to him since we never found him (believe me we tried!), but I suspect his friendliness and innocence towards other animals might have contributed to his absence, as there have been coyotes in our neighborhood.  That’s all I want to say about that. It’s been hard to grieve him because there’s no evidence of what happened.  I still have hope that maybe he’s alive and well bringing joy to other humans who have taken him in.

But I believe it’s time to openly share how much I love him and what a great, funny, fluffy, and loving cat he was for me.

Blurry picture, but this is one of a few pictures of him with me as a baby. He was often very cuddly, but could also make a disaster area out of my old apartment! He had both a mischievous side and a very loving side as a baby.

As a kitten he took a liking to my baby blanket, and continued to be enamored with it until he disappeared. You can see it in many of my photographs.

Eventually I moved out of the apartment, and took him home to my parent’s house. My parents were upset at first when they realized he had been snuck in, but they quickly realized how great a cat he was. I don’t want to post the photos of my parents with him, because I think they’d get annoyed by me posting them on my blog, but there were several I considered posting anyhow. Franz liked to groom my dad’s hair and beard almost every night. He loved my mom, she was the only one who was allowed to pick him up and cuddle him that way.

He was my best friend and I could always count on him to make me feel better when I felt bad. I had never had a cat that would let me put my arms around him and go to sleep, or who would curl up right beside me.

He really did act like a dog sometimes.

He and I had a routine every night, and if I broke the routine, he’d get upset. Every night around the same time he would wait until I was ready to go upstairs for bed, run up the stairs with me, wait in the bathroom while I brushed my teeth (sometimes he’d like to go into the tub), and then prance into my bedroom, where he’d cuddle with me until I really wanted to go to sleep, in which case I usually rolled over and let him have more room. Sometimes there would be times where I wouldn’t want to go to bed when he wanted to, and so either I’d settle him into bed until he fell asleep like an actual baby and then go do what other things I needed to do elsewhere, or he would wait for me and get a little frustrated and meow or get my attention by knocking as many things he could find in the room around me down.

In looking for the best pictures of him on my phone, I found this picture that to me seems to capture the sometimes funny side of our cat-human relationship.

One time, he had gotten out of the house earlier in the morning than he was supposed to, and my window had been open which was unusual, and I wasn’t aware of this. Suddenly I was awoken to him meowing and scratching at something. Thinking he was being his usual pain as he sometimes was in the morning, I finally got out of bed to get him at least out of my room. However, he wasn’t in the room! He was actually outside, having climbed onto the roof in front of my bedroom window, and was trying to get in! We called him the cat burglar.

(This picture was taken on another occasion)

This was taken on the morning of the incident before we got him inside

Though he was only in my life for a short amount of time, I will never forget this cat. Rest in peace, wherever you are, Franz. I miss you…