My wife found Tucker on "free cat day" at a local shelter, a few months before she and I met. He had been adopted and returned at least twice, and he was the oldest cat at the shelter now at 4 or 5 years old. They were instantly soul mates.

I came into the picture with my own cat, Kiki, who we lost just two years later to a terrible mixup between the vet and the pharmacist during Covid. They gave her the wrong medicine, and by the time I discovered the error, it was too late.

Tucker felt the loss as much as we did, such an empathic and sweet-natured creature. He came to us when we were sick or sad or couldn't sleep, and comforted us. He touched our faces gently with his paws to wake us up for breakfast, or to ask that we return the gesture and pet him. He loved being "the little spoon" and would use your arm like a body pillow. You could rub his belly, his paws, pick him up; he loved all forms of attention. He would purr so hard and so loud and for so long for even just a little affection. He would even drool a little when he really got into it. Everybody was a friend, he had no fear of strangers and was loving to everyone who ever set foot in our home. Our constant companion.

Ten years go by so quickly.

We had to put Tucker to sleep yesterday -- October 23, 2026, at 4pm. The vet came to our home to do the vile but necessary thing. He had been anemic since September, and sonograms discovered a mass on his small intestine that turned out to be lymphoma. In just a month be went from himself to a husk, unable to play or jump or eat or drink. We tried so many medications to shrink the mass, to treat the reduced appetite, the nausea, but it wasn't enough. It was his time. And it was the only compassionate thing left that we had to do. This photo was one of the last of him, I snapped it when we took him in the backyard to enjoy one of the first cool nights of the year here in Florida.

We miss him so much. We know that the pain we feel now is the trade we made for taking his pain away. But it still sucks. Life is not promised to any of us, and when time is up, there's no bargaining your way out of it. We will live each day now as we think he would have wanted. Hug your loved ones, tell them you love and admire them, appreciate whatever you have as much as you can. Whatever it is, it's not promised, and some day it will be gone. By the same token, even this hurt we feel will someday fade away into memory. Appreciate it. Even the bad parts. It's all just temporary, and there's value in there somewhere, so make the most of it. It's what Tucker would have done.