Hawkeye

“My husband passed in August 2015. During one of his hospital stays, his cat passed. About a week after his cat passed, my husband commented he missed him. Easy fix! So we went looking and found Hawkeye at the local shelter. They told us he was about 4 years old.

My husband went into the hospital the final time about a week later and didn’t come home. I sold our house and relocated to South Florida to be closer to my daughter and grandchildren.

Hawkeye thrived in my household with a brother and 2 sisters. His brother passed from cancer in 2016 so I was left with him and the girls. He grew to be 16 1/2 pounds of pure love. He loved his bed and slept on it most of the day. Every night he stretched out over the whole side of the bed my husband would have slept on.

During the COVID years, I was taking all my Bible classes and church via Zoom or live streaming. He loved being held like a baby while I was watching. He would cup my face with his paws. I actually had classes come to halt so people could see who was cupping my face!

I had a ladies’ Bible class in my home on Saturday nights. He went from person to person being loved on by many. A friend and I took a month to travel across the country in June of 2021. My best friend cat sat for me. She would come and do her Bible classes from here with him on her lap. She considered him her baby.

In 2021, I noticed he started losing weight but with no other symptoms. All the vet tests came back completely normal so the assumption was he had cancer. So all I could do was make sure his life was the most amazing possible.

I started using a vet that would come to my home in 2022 to reduce the stress on him. The first time the home vet walked in, he took one look at Hawkeye and said he was a really old cat! He figures Hawkeye was around 18-19 and that was why he was losing weight. Again we did testing and everything came back normal so now I knew for sure he was just getting older. He never seemed to be in pain other than a chronic ear infection that we handled through antibiotics.

Hawkeye eventually went blind and became incontinent. I set up a pet playpen with pee pads so he could be mobile but safe. He lived his last year in the playpen only coming out for breakfast and dinner. He really like the security of the playpen and would go back to it when he was ready to be put back in.

God truly blessed me with an amazing boy. He will be one of the many cats that will live on in my memories.

“‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.'”