Dear sweet Junior, here are the things that we will always remember about you:

1. We adopted you and your “brother” Bongo from Forgotten Felines, after seeing you at PetSmart.
2. I don’t think you and Bongo are really brothers. You were small and sleek and fast. Bongo is big and round, with short legs and “puma” paws. You were a beautiful tabby with white markings. Bongo is white with solid gray markings.
3. We named you Junior because you looked a lot like our other cat Loki. At first glance anyway. You had a white spot on the very tip of your tail. That’s how we knew it was you.
4. You had the loudest purr of any cat I ever lived with. It sounded like a motor.
5. When Dad or I were in the kitchen, you would jump on the counter and lay in front of the coffee maker, purring your loud purr, waiting to get petted. Sometimes you would nap there until we left the kitchen.
6. I will always remember your “love nips”. Never painful or mean, just a “hey more face rubs please”.
7. You were so smart. When you wanted to come in, you would jump on the tall pot by the outside bedroom door and jiggle the door knob. The first time you did this really scared me. It was dark and I thought someone was trying to get inside. How I would love to hear that sound again.
8. We had many names for you: Junior, Juni, June June, Junster, Junipurr, and Juneberry.
9. You would go outside every night, cold or warm, rain or shine, then come home in the morning. After eating, you would find a comfy place in the house and sleep all day. Your favorite spot was the shelf by the window in the upstairs bedroom. The window faced south and you and Loki would sleep there together.

Saturday morning, December 15, 2018, you didn’t come home. We weren’t too worried. It was raining and we thought you were staying dry somewhere. Then the rain stopped and the sun came out. Still you didn’t come home. We walked around the neighborhood calling and whistling. We found you Monday, December 17, my birthday. You were on the side of the road. Junior, we didn’t want to believe it was you. “This cat is too big to be Junior”, “Junior would never wander this far from home”, and “Where’s the white spot on the tip of the tail?” But, then I lifted the tip of your tail, and there it was: the white spot. We brought you home and now you are resting next to Mango, who is resting next to Gypsy, then Kiwi, Marble, Milo, Foxy, and Pixel

Dearest sweetest Juni. You were only a year and a half old. I thought we would have years together. You gave us so much joy in your short life. We will never forget you.