Sweet Stephen

We are heartbroken to share that our dear beloved Stephen passed away on Thursday, March 9, after a short unidentified illness.  

He got noticeably sick about 6 weeks ago.  He lost his appetite and became less active and joyful.  The vet did some testing and didn't find anything, so they prescribed an appetite stimulant and gave him fluids and an anti-nausea medication.  Those things didn't help much.  On Wednesday, we took him back to the vet and they told us he was very sick, but there might be one last thing to try: steroids.  The vet had a few ideas of what could be wrong.  Maybe he had a flare-up of inflammatory bowel disease (fixable), maybe it's an auto-immune anemia (fixable), maybe it's a liver problem (bad), or maybe it's intestinal lymphoma (very bad).  Steroid treatment would potentially be beneficial in all those cases, so we were hopeful.

Thursday morning, however, Stephen was even sicker.  He was having trouble walking, and he began to groan and wheeze.  We went in very quickly because he was clearly in pain and afraid.

Though the end of his earthly life was sad and scary, we were with him to the very end and he knew he was loved.  He was not alone.  His life with us was happy and silly and peaceful.  We're grateful for the years we had with him.

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Stephen came to us in 2012, when his feral Momma, Madge, gave birth to four beautiful kittens.  We found them in a rosemary bush in our front yard.  He and his siblings were tiny, with fleas and eye infections, but not for long!  They went right to the vet and got all better!  Two of the kittens found homes with other families, but we adopted Stephen and his brother Allistair.  We are very proud of them both for their smarts, their sweetness, and their silly and delightful personalities.  Stephen was especially silly and playful and eager to be part of anything fun that might be happening.

Stephen after his first bath:

Grown up, with his brother.

One of Stephen's favorite things was drooping off things!  He was probably part sloth.

For some reason, getting a camera out in his presence made him need to yawn!  I have more photos of Stephen yawning than of anyone else yawning.

Best one:

Smooshing the brother!

With Auntie Cindy:

My dear friend Echo sent flowers to celebrate Stephen's life.  

We are sad, and it helps to look through the photos from the very happy times during Stephen's earthly life.  We miss him.

See you soon, sweet silly playful cute Stephen.  We love you.