His name is Niles

 

I am not going to say our cat died because he didn't. Died sounds so final and never to be again. Our cat did however pass away on Super bowl Sunday Feb 2nd 2014. He was just about 19 years young. Heck he was freaking old!

 

He was a mixed breed but mostly Siamese, which just about looked liked my child hood cat. He had a black face with a dark gray back and black/white feet with a white tip on his black tail. 
Beautiful big blue piercing eyes that would just stare at you for affection.
He was rough at times and bit people even strangers because he was very playful. He did not mean to do it; He just wanted to play. He was rambunctious and tried to do things that he really should not had attempted, but somehow attempted it and succeeded anyway.
For instance jumping out a second story window and surviving only to go around and TRY IT AGAIN!
Jumping onto a table to jump onto the railing of a deck and walk around the railing on the deck. The thing is the deck was 50 feet off the ground! Of course my wife and I panic and grabbed him. The thing is he kept trying to get away from us still running around on the railing. He was an indoor cat, so he only went out onto our top deck. He did this until he did not want to go out anymore. 
He would lie on his side and start to scratch his head with his hind legs in a frantic motion as if he was having a temper tantrum. We would try and stop that and then he would chase us around the house and try to bite our legs and feet. We would then throw a tennis ball toward him and he started to scratch that lying on his side with his hind legs instead of his face. He actually ripped one of the tennis balls open at the seam, so I put a couple of eyes on it so it looked like pacman or should I say pacball. 
If he was not getting into mischief, he was sleeping or begging for food. We had started to feed him wet food in his later years, since his sniffer was not that good. He was brought up mainly with dry food though. He sneezed all over our house and left snots on every wall he could hit.  
He was very loving. He would lay next to me at night especially during the winter time and sleep with his head beside mine like he was human. He would actually lay on his side and put his head on my pillow next to mine. He would then leave to do his business and eat during the night and come back to lay next to me again. He did this for several years until he got older. 
His name is Niles. I am not going to say was because his name is still Niles. He passed; He did not die. 
He was born in a litter next to my in-laws house in Florida in 1995. He was then given to my wife and I in 1999. Not as a gift though because they wanted to get rid of him since he was a pain in the ass.. Just kidding.. It is because my mother-in-law had allergies to animals, which the dumb ass did not even know. Just kidding again or am I! She said she was always stuffed up and the doctor said well that's why, since you have had animals all your life. Dumb ass!
For the next 15 years we took him in as our own and grew closer and closer to him as the years went on. He had such energy and purred like a steam engine up until about his last day. He aged as I have never seen a cat age before, but we could not put him down since he still ate and purred. He was very affectionate still and was even able to get up and down the stairs. He could just jump on a couch at this point. His hair turned white again as if he was regressing to when he was a kitten, but he would still jump into our laps and lay there for a while until he was done then lay on the floor. In his last days he was still very affectionate, drank lots of water and ate his food. He just gave up one evening the day before Super Bowl 2014. We went out to lunch that day with a coupon no less for Mexican. We had bought cat food, treats and litter for him thinking and/or believing that he was still alright. We came home and I dropped a case of vodka on the floor to let him know we were home, since he had been deaf for over a year now. I saw him lift his head from his newly found spot sitting next to a heater vent in the kitchen. I walked over to him and he tried O so hard to get up on his own, but he lied back down again. I picked him up and put him by the kitchen sink, since this was his favorite place to drink water. He did not drink. We had gotten everything put away from our trip still thinking he is okay and even gave him some treats, which he ate some before retreating to the terrace level. He then seemed very out of it and lethargic, but he did go the bathroom in the shower. We actually trained him in his old age to pee in the shower without our help. Through the evening he lay mostly but tried to hide under a chair or corner. We picked him up but he refused to be cuddled.  I watched him go up to his water, and he just looked at it. He then turned around and laid on the floor next to a heater we had for him. As I mentioned before he even had some treats earlier in the day and had some wet food that he grew to like, but he just gave up that day. We brought him up during the evening as we went to bed. He laid quietly next to our bed. We awoke in the morning to what I thought was his meow only to find out he had passed. I heard his last meow/words before he passed next to our bed. 
He went peacefully that day. He lived a long life and was cared for deeply. He cared about us very deeply since he lived SO long and gave us joy. He was a pain in the but sometimes but all living things are.  We will always love Niles very much, and he will be loved and remember always. 
 

 

His name is Niles
RIP March 1995 - February 2014