Rest In Peace, Tommy

My wife put it best on Facebook, so I’m just going to echo her words:

I was up for hours last night, staring at the ceiling. Trying to find the right words. After about two dozen drafts of this post, I decided to be short on description, but long on love and gratitude.

Last night Pack and I received the call we had been quietly dreading. At 9:40pm Tommy went into cardiac arrest. We raced to Oradell Animal Hospital to be with him and they were able to revive him long enough for us to have the chance to say goodbye…

There are Tommy-shaped holes everywhere we look around the house this morning, but we’ve been doing our best to fill those holes with the best memories…<3 Thank you to all our friends for their outpouring of love over the past 2 1/2 weeks. Whether you had ever met Tommy in person or not, your words meant the world to us. To Dr. Hall and Mandy and the staff at Oradell… thank you for LITERALLY bringing him back from the edge and making him feel loved in the most difficult circumstances. Thank you to the ASPCA for taking Tommy off the streets of Manhattan in 2008 and giving us the opportunity to have this ball of purrs, “MGYAH!”s and love in our lives to begin with. :)

Tommooch, we love you, buddy. We miss you, your lil’ brother Ianto misses you… heck, even the “new kids” Freddie & Cran miss you, though they didn’t know you long. We’ll see you again someday, but for the time being, go find those laps Daddy & I told you about. There are a lot of awesome people up there in Heaven who took care of mom & dad who will take good care of you until we get there… <3

Posing. And waiting for kibble. Mostly, the latter.

After dinner Daddy Packo snuggleses are the best.

Afternoon napses on mommy’s chest.

“You, uhh, gonna finish all of that, Ian? I’m not sure you’re aware of this, but I iz WORLD FAMUS quality control kibbal inspector!”

Of all the Tommy/Ian pics we’ve got, THIS one is the best. Hands (paws?) down.
After we rescued Ianto off the streets of Jersey City in a rainstorm, Tommy took over parenting the lil’ 5 week old ball of fluff… and he never stopped, really. Even as a 9 year old cat, Ianto would still be held down and groomed by Tommoo from time to time…