It's so difficult to write something like this because how I experienced Feats was hands-on and daily. I can't -- and don't -- expect anyone to experience him the way I did simply through my writing about him. But my fear in writing this is that I won't do a good job, that I won't capture the key things that made him truly essential. My hope in telling his story is, however, that anyone that chooses to read about him finishes this story and then goes and hugs their cat or dog or ferret (or whatever) and stops for a moment in what feels like a chaotic world to embrace the peace and purity that these beings bring to us so regularly and completely that we don't always hold it in the way we should -- with joy.

If I had one emotion that characterizes how Feats was and what he meant, it's that word above -- JOY. I adopted him along with his brother, Rufus, in December of 2007. They were 7 months old. Fun fact: Feats' name is short for "Featuring Chaka Khan". So together, they were "Rufus, Featuring Chaka Khan". Ha. 😊

They joined our cat family after losing Baby Girl, leaving then only very elderly 17 1/2 year old Grady. Grady let us know that he didn't like being the only of his species in the household, and so even though we weren't considering getting more cats after the loss of Baby Girl, we knew what we needed to do for Grady and Rufus and Feats joined the family.

Even though they were brothers, their dispositions could not have been more different. Rufus literally bounded into every room. Feats? He was more reserved. Not scared -- it wasn't that. Just... he made choices and bounding wasn't among them, at least not initially. He wanted to feel out his new world after a short isolation period (to ensure neither of these two adorable brothers had a virus or something else that could be given to elderly Grady). So when they were finally deemed healthy and I opened the door to the cat room, Rufus bounded. Feats stayed put and looked at the open door warily. Eventually -- like the 2nd day he had been granted the run of the house -- Feats ventured out.

Once ventured, he blossomed into his full Feats glory. He was still a kitten, really, at 7 months old, and toys were a thing. He had affinity, however, for the oddest toys. Zip ties were prime choices (yes, zip ties). There was something about how they swooshed but didn't collapse that he found irresistible. I'd break out a zip tie for a play session and he'd start tracking it with his eyes and then he'd pounce on it and attempt to chew the crap out of it right in the middle. He could do this endlessly -- or at least that's how it seemed.

The sheets on the bed were another "toy". One day, I was changing the sheets in the bedroom and he just happened to be present. So you know how that goes -- you get the fitted sheet on and then you take the flat sheet and you fluff it out by holding it and raising your arms/hands up in an attempt to get it situated enough to where you have it evenly on the bed, trapping air underneath as the sheet settles. So Feats is watching all of this, and at that moment that the flat sheet, now fluffed, is settling onto the bed but not fully settled, he LEAPED into the center where the air still had it slightly but not fully down on the bed. What commenced -- I truly wish I had video -- was hilarious. He would pounce and sliiiiiide into the air bubble, pushing the bubble just a bit and then sliiiiiide into the one that the pounce created. Eventually he'd get to where there were only small wrinkles in that flat sheet and he'd chase those, juking one direction towards a wrinkle and then lightning fast in the other direction where a new wrinkle his first action created. He was fast when he did this, and to an observer like me it looked like his body was almost blurring in its speed to dominate those wrinkles. Once he had the the wrinkle kingdom firmly under his control, he would settle down dead center in the huge bed. So much for the blanket! That had to wait. Feats was resting. 😊 Bringing those wrinkles under control was, after all, hard work.

He did have traditional toys as well, of course. One very special one was his "baby". His baby was a knitted pink mouse, average size -- neither large nor small --but the perfect size to be picked up and carried in his mouth. And OMG, did he carry Pink Baby around, but only under very specific circumstances and conditions.

Those conditions were:

- He was on the main floor of our house
- Neither my husband nor I could be on the main floor at that time
- It was almost always after dark (with a few exceptions), so nighttime

He would pick that baby up in his mouth and start walking around with it, meowing around the baby, which created a very distinctive meow. He would then drop the baby, stare at it, meow a little more, gently bat it around, meow at it, and then gently pick it back up in his mouth and start the whole thing over again. And I am telling you -- it was LOUD and it often went on for a while. My husband and I would laugh (always) and wonder if the neighbors thought we were torturing our cat! BabyingTM was. A. Thing. His thing. And the best part of this was if we were trying to surreptitiously watch him Babying and he caught sight of us? He dropped it and would look at us and he legit looked sheepish and guilty.

Minor crisis -- that pink baby got lost for like two years! But, Feats, ever pliable and happy, chose a Substitute Baby, another darker pink mouse toy with a different shape. That seems small, but it was very Feats -- never stressed, happy to be happy, happy to share that, and happy to adapt when Pink Baby went missing. We did find Pink Baby, for what it's worth. We replaced our washer and dryer and when the old ones were removed, there was Pink Baby underneath where the dryer had been. Feats welcomed Pink Baby back as if it had never been missing. It's hard to describe exactly why that fact is one that demonstrates his core serenity and joy, so I'll say this: He seemed, always, as if he knew things would work out. He wasn't stuck on just Pink Baby, though he clearly had a preference. It was subtler -- it's as if he knew that Pink Baby was still somewhere and that eventually they would be reunited, so Substitute Baby was perfectly fine until that reunion occurred. Feats didn't sweat the small stuff. I still have both Pink Baby and Substitute Baby -- they're on Feats' memorial. He loved who and what he loved, and that's at the core of who he was and what he meant to me.

I'm going to jump forward. I could tell Feats stories from my memories all day, like the time he went to a dental specialist on advice of his regular vet and had to have 17 (yes, seventeen) teeth removed. That sticks out for me because they discharged him with a pain management patch that worked, but his sweet little face was all fat and slightly swollen. I'm telling you, I had to refrain from kissing that slightly-plumper-than-usual kissable face of his because I knew it could cause him pain or discomfort. Or the time he stuck his head through the handles of a paper handle bag, scared the crap out of himself and went running around the house try to get away from the bag (which was firmly affixed around his neck by those handles) yet allowed me to come help him. Every single handle-bag after that got its handles cut. Every. Single. One. He trusted me to help him, and he trusted -- on some level -- that I would do anything I could to ensure he wouldn't be frightened like that again.

The last six years of his life -- so starting with Covid until 4/8/26 -- those have been extra special. It's not that he was any more lovable than he had been before. It's just that his lovability and his ability to reciprocate intensified. Age does that to us (hopefully). It slows us down from our kittenish (or child/young-adultish) pace into a pace that is more receptive, more willing to take the time to love and be loved.

I know that all of us with cats love our cats and see what's unique about them. I can sit here and tell you that he was extra-special lovable, and you would expect me to say that because that's what he always was to me. So what I'll do instead is talk about one time recently, at the vet.

Feats had a small left forebrain ischemic stroke in mid-December of 2025. He recovered from that quickly -- like rapidly. At his age then, a few months short of 19 years old, this wasn't unusual. But because of that event, even though he fully recovered, we started seeing a veterinary neurologist.

The likely small stroke happened on 12/13/25, and his appointment with neurology afterward was on 12/17/25. I was a MESS, scared and worried, going into that appointment. This particular old cat issue was one I'd not experienced before, and I was in knots. I was really open and honest about that with the neurology nurse who took his history and notes prior to the neurologist's assessment.

If you've never had a veterinary neurology appointment, here's how it goes. You get there, the nurse takes notes and asks questions to help understand how he was at home (for context) and then asks any other questions about diet, eating, medications etc. Then that nurse takes him back to a separate room where the neurologist does an evaluation. Human caregivers are explicitly excluded from that assessment because the neurologist wants to see the cat without the distraction of their human.

So he's back with the neurologist and I'm an absolute nerve-ball waiting for the results. The neurologist walks in with him, looks at me and says two things: "First, this won't be a bad discussion. But second, I just have to say -- he is a lovely cat." Honestly? It was like someone just told me my kindergartener might be a certified genius. At his neurology recheck appointment in February, after she had finished his assessment, she brought him back in and he's walking around, and she picks him up and hugs him, kisses him on the head and says, "I just love him". This is the same neurologist who was present from the time I took him to the ER in the very very early morning hours (shortly after midnight) on 4/7/2026 and oversaw his care. I don't want to drag everyone into the details of this last vet visit for Feats -- it's too painful. But I do want to highlight one more thing from this neurologist. We decided that Feats should have a CT scan on the morning 4/8/2026. She asked me if I wanted her to wait until I got there to start the anesthesia, to basically give him a hug and a kiss before the anesthesia, which is always more of a risk in a 19 year old can than in a 9 year old one.

I told her no, he knows I love him. I kiss him all day every day multiple times a day. She said that since he had been admitted to the ER, during the day, she checked on him every hour and kissed his head as well. That part almost broke me and is almost doing so again -- Yes, because of grief and loss. But also because I know how he loved like that. Always calm, always purring, even at the vet. Always social, trusting, content to be petted and kissed. Every single vet he ever saw said the same thing, and that's not pride speaking on my part. What I'm trying to get at is that that was him, and it wasn't just me who saw it.

I work from home and have done so since the beginning of Covid. I get to spend a lot of time with my cats (going into Covid I had four -- now I am down to one) as a result, and I'm ridiculously grateful for that. But my job is stressful. My life is stressful, I'm sure not unlike the lives of every single person reading this. I carry a lot of responsibility voluntarily, and sometimes the circumstances of the world, my job, and my responsibilities get overwhelming. I know others can completely relate.

But what I had with Feats was this: no matter how stressful or bad my day was going, I could go to look in on him and he would pick his head up and look at me and he'd go, "Meow?" and I would smile -- joy. I could go into whatever room he was in and find him lounging in a warm sunbeam and I would gently touch him and he'd wake and immediately come to me and I would smile -- joy. At dinnertime every night -- before we would embark on TV time -- he would pause to ensure I was actually getting his dinner together before going to seek my husband out for some cuddles, like clockwork -- joy. I'd get him a coveted treat and he'd see it and his little face would light up. Joy. He'd come into my home office and put those two front paws up on my leg to cuddle in my lap while I worked and was on meetings -- joy. There were so many small, quiet moments of just pure joy with him in my life, daily.

I love all of my cats, past and present. No question. But Feats brought me daily joy with countless small encounters. In addition to the absence of him -- of Feats -- of the Babying and the handle-bag incident and the bed crazies, of his affinity for boxes (massive) and his desire to be "under" (blankets, sheets etc), of his irresistibly kissable pink toe beans and the way that he literally held my hand when we watched TV, cuddled, and every night as I slept -- it's those small moments of joy that I'm missing especially. I don't think I realized just how often he provided that joy until those little spaces in my mundane daily life weren't getting filled in that very Feats-specific way. I am grateful, however, to be able to look back and recognize that joy for what it always was: love, trust, and -- importantly -- connection. Losing all of that in its various daily iterations hurts. But not ever having those things? I can't even imagine how hard that would be. I do know that fostering that connection alongside his love is what nurtured the joy.

So -- this is long and I've skipped over so much to try to share Feats with anyone willing to read all of this until the end. If I have one thing I would ask if you've made it this far, it's this: let the joy in. As much as you can, see it, acknowledge it, treasure it, name it. Seek that connection that fosters joy. For me, this joy comes from one very special cat, yes, but in its own way it's come from all of my cats over my lifetime. So if you have a cat or a dog or a hamster or whatever, or if you have several of them, go hug them tight. Let them share their joy with you, even if it's just for a few seconds where something they did or the way they greeted you caused you to spontaneously smile. And if you're so inclined, send up a little remembrance to Feats, my very special very sweet joy machine. I really miss him.

Please also visit Baby Girl, Bella, Clide, Grady, Henry and Rufus.