Some of you may be aware that my cat, Oliver, went missing a while back.  It has been two months now, and so I have decided it is time to say goodbye.  Oliver was the first pet that was truely my own.  We adopted he and his sister, Twist, from my sister in law about nine years ago.

Oliver and I didn’t always see eye to eye on everything and had quite a few fights.  Eventually, we discovered that by letting him be an indoor/outdoor cat he was immeasurably happier.  We knew the risks of that decision, his sister Twist was hit by a car when she was just a couple of years old.  Oliver is also extremely friendly, so we worried about him getting “adopted” by another family.  Oliver also had little fear, picking fights with large dogs (Olive was 19 lbs), so we worried about him starting a fight that he couldn’t finish.  I guess I won’t ever really know what happened to him, and it is possible, however unlikely, that he will show up one day, rolling around on the sidewalk to greet me.

Here are some of the things about Oliver that I will never forget.

  • He would stalk light switches, jumping up to turn them on or off, then always seemed surprised at the result and ran away.
  • At night he would crawl onto my chest and lay down, then inch his way forwards to try and bite the hairs of my goatee and pull them.  It always made me nervous.
  • Everyday when I came home from work he would be waiting for me by the front door, rolling around and purring.
  • When he was younger he would play fetch with me, with those faux fabric mice.  I would throw them across the house and he would bring them back to me, over and over.
  • For the majority of my life with Oliver, I never saw bugs in the house, ever.
  • Oliver loved ice cream, and would get extremely aggressive going after my bowls.  Sometimes I let him lick them clean when I was done.

And lastly, here is a gallery of pictures of Oliver

Goodbye Oliver, I will miss you.