I See My Breath Outside, I'm Freezing, I'm Motionless, I'm Disbelieving

First off I want to say that I love every animal I've ever had, and I will love any animal I have in the future, but I will NEVER have another cat like Archie. He is such a dork, he's funny, and empathetic (and for a cat that is REALLY weird). Almost everyone who has met him thinks he has to have some dog in him. He is my beloved familiar.

I first met Archie in 2010 when he was a kitten. He was the biggest spaz at the shelter. I told John that if he was affectionate as well, I would try to adopt him. Turned out he was ridiculously affectionate. He loves attention and will snuggle with anyone. He will let people pick him up and carry him around, even if they aren't being super careful. I have had to tell more than one of my friends to put him down, because they were being too rough and I could tell Archie was uncomfortable. Most cats would scratch your face and jump away. Not Archie. I have a feeling it's less about him worrying about hurting a human than being an attention whore, but I TOTALLY understand that.

As a kitten he was a terror. The people at the shelter told me he was adopted once before and then brought back. They said it was because the other cats in the house were mean to him, but he shredded every one of my blinds, accidentally ripped my lip open, and purposely dropped books on my head while I was sleeping to let me know he was hungry, so I think there was a little more to it than just the mean cats.

Archie's most hated thing in the world is going for a ride in the car to see the vet. He's smart like that. Last month on his annual appointment, we had them do some blood work. Archie used to weigh 21.5 pounds, but now he is 12 lbs. He has also been drinking tons of water.

With humans, they always say that if we live long enough, we will inevitably get dementia. With cats it's kidney disease. Archie is 13.5 years old now, and you guessed it, he was diagnosed with kidney disease. He has anemia as well, and our vet said the anemia might kill him faster than the kidney disease.

We're all heartbroken. The vet said he'll probably live another year, but not much more, and it could be less. She said there isn't a lot they could do for him. We did get some kidney disease specific cat food. She said we might possibly be able to do a kidney transplant. The weird thing, is that they do that by taking another cat's kidney, and after the surgery, you have to take that kidney donor cat home with you and adopt it. Weird, huh? That may or may not work, but if you'll remember, Archie HATES the vet, and he's old so he might not tolerate a surgery like that anyway. Mostly, I just want him to be happy and free from stress or pain. So, our plan is to let him eat as much as he wants, we have some lactated ringers handy in case we need to give him IV fluids, and then we'll just spoil him even more than we already do (if that's even possible).

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As you know, he's so suave and handsome that we named him Archibald Leech after Cary Grant. Even as an old man he still looks distinguished.

I don't know what we'll do when he's gone, because he won't be around to supervise our home improvement projects, and we're just stupid humans that will mess everything up on our own.

He still has so much he wants to do before he succumbs to his disease. He spends hours working on editing his yoga work-out videos.

We have kicked around the idea of getting ANOTHER cat in the next few months. Poor Gus Gus is going to be wrecked without him to play with, and he does an incredible job training kittens to behave better without being too rough.

 I just want to spend as much time loving him while I can. I'm going to miss him slapping my phone out out of my hand so that I'll spend more time staring at him instead, lying on top of me and crushing me when he knows I'm sad, arguing with me about whether it's time to eat or not (it's not), and watching him growl and hiss at the mailman. I have no idea what happens after we die, but for Archie's sake I hope there are unlimited supplies of fresh catnip, tuna juice, sinks of every shape and size, and gigantic scratch boxes located right next to sunny windows.

Oh, Archie. I thought you would live forever on piss and vinegar. Let's just hope we get more time with you than the vet predicted.