My parents informed me last night that my magical, mystical doodle cat, the enigmatic Mr. Data, passed from this existence last Thursday. My dad said that he woke up that morning and went into the kitchen to make coffee. Data was on the counter where he had fallen asleep the previous evening. He looked up at my dad, meowed once, and was no more. <\/p>\n

Always the gentleman, he waited until he could properly say goodbye and thank you before departing. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Part of me wasn’t surprised when my parents told me. Part of me somehow expected to hear this news when I called. I don’t know how to explain it, but somehow I already knew. Part of me regrets that I wasn’t there to say goodbye. Part of me doesn’t ever want to have to say goodbye to another pet ever again. It’s way too hard and, quite frankly, my soul is a bit weary of saying goodbye to those I love. <\/p>\n

Still, he had a magnificent run at this life. He would have been 18 years old this June, which means that he was part of my life for more than half of my existence. I’d post photos of him in his kittenhood, he with his perfectly triangular head and skinny kitty body, but those will need to be scanned. Yes, he predated digital cameras. Came before my first cell phone, too. He even slightly predated my very first computer, which came into the house a few months after his arrival. <\/p>\n

Obviously, he didn’t’ predate my Trek obsession. Poor little guy, stuck with a nerd name all his life. It was his own fault, though. His eyes were the most beautiful…most Data <\/em>shade of gold imaginable when he was a kitten. There really was no other name for him. The gold metamorphosed and faded as he aged, but they remained beautiful. Just like him.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

He was a rescue kitty, found crawling out of a gutter by my aunt. Filthy and flea-infested, he was hardly recognizable as feline. So she took him home, bathed him and gave him food. He thanked her by voraciously consuming said food and then pooping in her plant box. That was pretty much when I fell in love with him. How could I not? <\/p>\n

Eighteen years is a long time to remember, too many years and far too many joyful memories to fully encapsulate in the space of this post. But to say simply that he was a wonderful, beautiful specimen of felinicity seems somehow insignificant. <\/p>\n

He was Data. Hinja-Doodle. Prettiest Kitty in the World. <\/p>\n

He outlived both of my dogs. More significantly, he survived Jodie’s puppydom. He also survived a poor decision on his part to consume part of a fake Christmas tree. Plastic pine needles are not <\/strong>good for digestion. He traded in one of his nine lives to learn this truth. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In his twilight years, he became a country king, moving with my parents to the Tarheel State. He was technically my kitty, but, as I wrote previously in my Angry Blogger^{TM<\/sup> days, he and my father shared a special bond, perhaps borne from their solitary maleness in an estrogen-heavy house. Who was I to tear that bond asunder? <\/p>\n}

I don’t really know what else to say. My doodle cat is gone. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Au revoir, Mr. Data. Je t’aime. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My parents informed me last night that my magical, mystical doodle cat, the enigmatic Mr. Data, passed from this existence last Thursday. My dad said that he woke up that morning and went into the kitchen to make coffee. Data was on the counter where he had fallen asleep the previous evening. He looked up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2602"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}