GregHowley.com

Earlier this week, on January 28th, we lost our cat Bender. We're all pretty sad.

We originally picked up Bender and his sister Tonga from a pet store in Colorado way back in December 2005. At the time, we'd had bad luck keeping plants alive, so we wanted to make sure we could parent a cat before we had actual human children. Linda is allergic to cats, but her family had a Siamese cat as she was growing up, and she'd been fine with it, so we knew that it was possible to find a hypoallergenic cat of some sort.

After several failed attempts and many hives, we ended up at a mall pet store. Pueblo, Colorado Springs, I'm not sure. They had Bengal kittens. One had a beautiful orange tiger pattern, the other was greyish and less visually striking, but was very playful. That was Bender. In the end, we broke the bank and bought two so they could keep each other company. I named him Bender, after the character from The Breakfast Club, and it was fitting. That cat was a criminal. But more like the Loki kind, and less like Kaiser Soze.

Fast forward more than a decade.

Bender's sister Tonga passed away a few years ago, and last summer we bought two new all-black Bengal kittens so he'd still have companionship. He overcame his initial indignation at having other cats in the house, and eventually cuddled with them. But his favorite was always my wife Linda.

Over the past month, Bender had been having a lot of trouble, and he'd lost a ton of weight. The last couple days were the worst. He didn't even want to move. The poor kitty must have been in pain. Bringing him to the vet that last time was difficult.

But we'll always have our memories of the best cat ever. Here's one of my favorite photos of Bender in a hat. He wasn't enjoying it, but we didn't torture him too long, and we got a great photo out of the deal.