Oliver Bacon

In 2007, Patrick and I moved in together. That October, he took me over to his aunt and uncle's house. They had a kitten that his cousin found in Norway (South Carolina, yes) and I had no idea that the plan was for this thing to come home with us. I had never had a cat, and we had recently, finally, gotten rid of the pair of annoying kittens our roommate had in the house. But we left their house that October night with this tiny thing and Patrick was only semi living in the house at the time, so I had to figure out quickly how to raise a kitten into a cat that didn't suck. He started out at the runt of the litter, pushed out to die.

Over the years, he grew into a massive cat, about 23 lbs. at his pinnacle. He wasn't fat, not really. He was just large.

He loved laying around. But we also made him work in the house, catching flies and roaches. He also was very demanding of us, showing us every single day where his food was and where it should be delivered.

We also made him judge hot dogs for quality purposes. (I really don't remember what was going on here, but he didn't even lick him, he wasn't a fan of people food).

And we got him to check out the plumbing in tight places that was easier for him to see than it was for us.

He was raised with only other dogs around and he took to a dog-like life, but with special perks afforded only to him, such as getting to go outside in the front yard on his own to skulk about.

Just last week I was feeling lethargic but also like I wanted to do something with my hands so I took his favorite scratching post and wrapped it with sisal for him to enjoy. He and I sat in the living room and worked on this for like, three hours. In fact, it's the very same post you can see him going bananas on in this circa 2007 Youtube video.

This last picture was taken Friday, June 9. We could tell he was feeling really bad, he was walking oddly and moving from location to location in the house, mostly on the cool tile areas, stretching out. I thought it was probably just a UTI, might require an overnight for fluids. But Saturday morning Patrick took him to the vet where we learned that it would be Oliver's last day. He was having trouble breathing, and his heart wasn't working like it should anymore. We had to make the obvious decision to let him go, our first pet together, our gato, the gooch, our Oliver Bacon Blake, 2007-2017.