Ollie picked me. I didn’t pick him.

When I entered the Glendale Animal Shelter back in 1999, I didn’t expect a cat to leap up and announce that he was coming home with me. But when the tiny black cat climbed the cage and scratched at me with his small claws, there wasn’t much left to say.

Named after the legendary animator Ollie Johnston, Ollie was my very first “living on my own” companion. Heck, there was no way I could keep a plant alive. A cat was much easier. He didn’t need much attention, just food, the occasional belly rub and litter cleaning. It was just the two of us living the bachelor life in a tiny Glendale apartment.

Ollie’s favorite companion soon became a stuffed seal, dubbed “Mr. Seal”. There was no logic as to why Ollie chose Mr. Seal as his toy. You could hear him at absurd hours of the night howling as he carried the stuffed toy around the apartment. Perhaps it was a lion/cub thing.

His other favorite companion was my ankles. Or hair. Sometimes it was my whole leg. The feistiness that attracted me to him in our first meeting stuck around. Ollie was even the first and thus far only cat I’ve flown with. He accompanied me to Boston one year, soaking in the New England atmosphere. I guess being placed in a bag and shoved under a seat with an allotment of 3.5 feet of space can be too much for a cat.

The one thing Ollie got plenty of was food. Early in the morning or late at night, the cat would eat and eat and eat. I joked at calling him “Rock” because he was so solid. If he leaped into a sliding glass door, he’d probably shatter it.

Over time, other friends arrived for Ollie to play with. Samantha, Sara, Tigger and eventually the boys. Each one was a friend and a fighting companion. The throw downs between Ollie and Tigger are stuff of WWE legend.

We’re not really sure when Ollie started losing weight. With two kids and careers to manage, checking on the cats doesn’t become second nature. But when he stopped using the litter box and stopped eating, we knew something was wrong.

A trip to the vet’s office confirmed that Ollie was suffering from kidney failure. There were more extensive (and expensive) procedures that we could try, but they wouldn’t “cure” him. He would die from this.

We took the weekend to think about it. We started giving him an IV along with dietary food, which he kind of liked, but the though of losing our cat loomed over us. Friday night we made the decision to put him down on Monday. We’d give him a peaceful weekend at home before heading off to the vet.

But then a strange thing happened. He bit us. There was spunk, vigor, energy. You couldn’t tell that this cat was sick. A blood test revealed that, by normal readings, this cat shouldn’t be alive, much less be this active. So Ollie stuck around a few weeks longer. He wasn’t ready to leave.

Every morning and night over the past month I held Ollie down as Sara shot an IV into his back for fluids. It was hard for us to put a cat down who was so full of life. Secretly, we hoped that Ollie would fall asleep one night and never wake up. He wasn’t suffering. We were suffering because we’d have to make the tough decision, albeit the right one, to end Ollie’s life.

As the weeks went by, Ollie’s conditioned worsened. He stopped eating. He stopped fighting us with the IV needle. As you ran your hand over his back, all your could feel was bones. Samantha and Ollie knew what was going on. So did we. And on Saturday, June 6th, I brought Ollie to the local animal hospital.

It’s a strange thing to put an animal down. You’re talking a creature’s life into your hands. As we waited in the exam room, he rubbed up against me and tried to leap down to the floor, unaware he had mere minutes left to live. The vet came in and administered the shot that would put him to sleep. Slowly, he became less active. The rubbing and wandering stopped. He finally laid down, placed his head into my palm and drifted off to sleep.

There was no way that I’d consider just ditching my cat and heading off. No animal deserves that. I watched the vet insert the injection into his leg and waited for the end. There was no gasp. No movie-like theatrical last breath. I didn’t even notice his breathing stop. In no less than thirty seconds, he was gone. The vet checked for a heartbeat and confirmed there was none. Shorty after 11am, my cat was dead.

I was welcome to stay with him for as long as I needed. I had really said goodbye to him weeks earlier when we first thought of putting him down. I kissed my cat on the head, rubbed him for the final time and left.

There’s no burial or jar of ashes for Ollie. Just a picture featuring him enjoying the view from the porch back at my old home in New Hampshire. Once we find a spot, we’ll place Mr. Seal, as well as his collar and tag by that frame. It’s quiet not hearing him howl at night. Tigger and Samatha stick closer to us now, having realized that their playmate and friend is gone for good.

I won’t say Ollie’s in a “better place”, because the best place for him was here, with people that loved him. Of course, if where ever he is feeds him, he’ll be OK. RIP Ollie.