Patches Patchinsky Ravelo

My fuzzy buddy, Patches, passed away today.




I inherited Patches from my sister, Kathryn, when she left for Italy. I can't recall how long ago that was...perhaps 5 or 6 years. He was already an old cat by then, and hefty.

He sure didn't like the hour drive from Lampassas, where I picked him up, to Austin. He cried the whole time.

Tom knew that I was bringing a cat home, so when one came sniffing around the back door, he assumed it was Patches. He opened the door, and the cat came in and walked around a bit. It wasn't until I called him and told him that I was on my way that he realized he had the wrong cat. Eventually, we got Patches there, and he made himself at home pretty quickly. This was at our apartment up in North Austin, where Patches would amuse himself watching the ducks that would come begging for food at our back door. I think he was a little afraid of them actually. Bravery wasn't in his nature.


Days later, his adopted sister, Kitty came to live with us. She was terrified by her new environment and hid under the bed for over a day. Patches, gentle soul that he was, went and laid beside her the whole time.



Eventually, Kitty got acclimated, and became the queen of the domain. Patches didn't mind, as long as he had a bowl full of food and a dish full of water.

It wasn't long before Sunny came and swept me off my feet, and convinced me to move to Houston. The cats went with me, which was hard on Tom because he and Patches were good buddies by then.



Neither of the cats liked the trip to Houston either, and the first apartment that Sunny and I lived in was not conducive to cats who liked to go outside and play.

Things changed after we moved to a better neighborhood, and a ground floor apartment. Kitty loves to roam, and spent many a night on the prowl. Patches rarely left the front porch, but he did love being outside. He would munch on the grass and lick at puddles of water. That's when he started developing his odd drinking habits. It seemed that he liked just about anything better than drinking out of his water bowl.



For a while, it was puddles or a toilet. I eventually broke him of the toilet habit (or at least while I was watching); later on he discovered condensation on water bottles. He loved licking it off. One morning, shortly after Sunny died, Patches saw me gargling with a Dixie cup, and started to beg for a drink. I made the mistake of giving in and putting a cup full of water on the floor for him. From then on, he would wake me up at all hours crying for Dixie cups. I broke him of that habit when we moved back to Austin. No more Dixie cups, but he again fell in love with condensation. Especially from a nice cold soda can. He'd go at it as if it were crack. Later, he found out that Tom sometimes left water in cups on the end table, and I found him with his head down in the cup more than once, lapping away.

Lately though, he had tapered of his licking. I noticed that his litter box was barely used (Kitty had started to go out more, and I assumed she was doing her business elsewhere). He got weak. However, his litter activity picked up again, and he seemed better. In the past few days however, he hadn't even eaten his treats, and wouldn't drink. He got to the point where he could only take a couple of steps at a time, and lost a lot of weight. I knew I had to get him to a vet, but thought it would be ok to wait until his appointment this weekend.

Today, Tom came home from work at about 4, and found Patches lying very still in the laundry room. That's right where he was when I left for work. Tom called me and told me he thought Patches had passed away, and he was upset and didn't know what I wanted to do. I told him he could wrap Patches in a towel if he wanted, and that I would take him out to a field later on. When Tom approached him however, Patches moved.

When I got home, Patches was lying in his litter box. I took him out and cleaned him up, and held him. He put his paw on my cheek as I carried him to Sunny's love seat, where I laid him on my lap and arm. He meowed a little bit now and then, twitched. He moved his front paws when I sang to him the song I often did.
"Patches Patchinski Ravelo...he's mellow."

I told him he was loved, and that he was a beautiful cat.

I know animals, at least dogs and cats, have souls, regardless of what the Catholics say. I told Patches to close his eyes, free his soul, and all his pain would be gone. I told him that Sunny would care for him now. He started drawing sharp breaths, his eyes wide open but blank, and a few minutes later he stopped. I thought I could still feel a slight purr or breathing, but it was just my imagination. Patches was gone.

Tom came out of his room and held me as I cried. He was crying too. We carried him out to a field and laid him behind the trees, with some cat treats for the road.

May your journey continue, Patches.