This morning, we said goodbye to Tim Tam.  After fifteen years, it was his time to rest and we gave him that.

For the past year, Tim Tam has had issues with his kidneys that would eventually lead to renal failure (i.e. shutting down of the kidneys).  Over the past couple of days, those symptoms started showing themselves.  He hasn’t been himself, eating sporadically, crying all through the night and then suddenly being extremely calm.  He’s always been a quirky cat but this was above and beyond his usual.

Yesterday afternoon, Tim Tam had a seizure followed by another one at 1 am.  To say it scared the shit out of Steph and I would be an understatement.  Based on conversations with the vet, we determined it was the end stage of renal failure.  The vet came in on a Sunday and we let Tim Tam go.

We got Tim Tam roughly the same time we got engaged.  It was an interesting time.  More of our friends were surprised that we got a cat than that we got engaged.  That kind of let us know where we stood in this Human/Cat relationship.

He came to us from the Humane Society in Cedar Rapids.  At the time we were living in a small apartment and had this brilliant idea that a cat would be a great pet.  Our first meeting of him was when he tried to escape the kitten room.  He panted the entire way home as we drove in Steph’s old yellow Chrysler hatchback without air conditioning in the middle of summer.

He was a crazy kitten.  He once knocked himself unconscious trying to jump up onto the table because he failed to account for the little edge that stuck out.  When a friend stayed at our apartment, Tim Tam would crawl to the bottom of his sleeping bag, then run to the top, and repeat.  This would have been more enjoyable had it not been in the middle of the night and our friend was trying to sleep.

As he grew older, he became a grumpy old man, except around Steph who was his favorite.  (I was second place but only after the nightly ankle ambush).  He basked in the sun, talked with the birds and his dinner, and made certain our laps never got cold in the coldest of winters or warmest of summers.  And we’re proud to say that Tim Tam kept us safe from the scourge of Christmas trees by knocking down every single one that we put up over the past fifteen years.

I’ve already written about how Tim Tam and Tucker got along.  They were inseparable brothers despite species.  Tim Tam now lies next to Tucker out at the farm.  We couldn’t imagine a better place for him.

Back home, the house is quiet.  And empty.  All because of, as a friend said, a ‘wonderfully rotten sweet terrifying cat’.