My lifetime loved kitty, Fred....

Fred hopped up onto the fender of my son's 69 Camaro one evening when he was working on the car. He brought Fred to me and named him Fred when he did! The vet said he was about 6 months old at the time. At first he stayed in and out of the house. One evening he came in with a big gash on his shoulder from a fight with the neighbor's cat. From then on, he was a totally inside kitty! He loved it! He was my constant companion...was in my lap every time I saw in the recliner...slept either on my pillow or under my arm every night...met me at the door every time I came back home...played hide-and-seek with me and learned to go get on his train when I told him to. He loved to eat more than anything! Everybody that came to the house knew his trick...they would come in and say "Food, Fred?" He would immediately race to the door where I kept his food and start pawing on the door! He was healthy all his life, until just before I was getting ready to move to a new place. I left him at the old house until everything was "ready" at the new place. I went by every day to check on him and spent the night there sometimes. The day I went to pick him up to take him to the new house, he wasn't acting right. He ate his food and then just sat in the floor, breathing heavily. I called the emergency vet (it was on a Saturday!)...they said to bring him right in. I did...they diagnosed pneumonia...said he had a hole in his lung!!! I think it happened when he tried to run out of the bedroom and someone tried to stop him by shutting the door (on HIM!). That was the only thing I could think of that could have caused it. The emergency vets treated him over the week-end and said he was improving. I took him back to his regular vet and they kept him and said he was getting better...not worse. That was on Monday. I went to visit him every day twice a day for an hour or so. He would just sit in my lap. But....he wouldn't eat ANYTHING!!! I took every kind of food he had ever liked...all the special treats he liked...he wouldn't eat. On Tuesday when I went, I asked the vet about it and he said it was probably the diuretics they were giving him. I found out later that they didn't give him ANY fluids...on Wednesday morning, they called & said I should take him to a specialty clinic...so I took him straight there. The vet had to do a tracheotomy, but it was too late...he called me early the next morning and said Fred didn't make it. I've never been more sad. I had to take off work 3 days, I was so traumatized at losing my best friend! I had Little Friends Pet Memorial pick him up and they put him in a casket and took him to the Houston Humane Society, where he was buried in the pet cemetery there. I even had our minister come out to the graveside and he said a prayer for us. He said it was the first cat funeral he'd ever done. My son & daughter-in-law, the minister and his wife, and I were there. That all happened in September 1991...and it's still as vivid in my memory as if it were yesterday. I'm so thankful for the 11-1/2 years he spent with me, but I'll never, ever forget the most special kitty I ever had...FRED!

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