Loki bounded into my life 15 years ago as an irrepressible extroverted tiny bundle of thunder and fluff.  He left it yesterday after letting me know that it was his time and humbling me with an unprecedented expression of unbounded love and trust.  He left this world in my arms surrounded not just by my love but also by the love of those who had cared for him and loved him in the last weeks and days of his life.

It wasn’t my intention at this point to reminisce about Loki.  I could tell story after story about him to show what an exceptional and magical cat he was but if you’re reading this you probably already know this.  I’ve realized however that there is one story that needs to be re-told.  Six years ago I went through an extensive sequence of dental work over the course of several months.  At one point I developed an extremely painful tooth infection.  The pain started in the evening and it was extreme and intense and no amount of ibuprofen would make it go away.  I somehow managed to fall asleep that night despite the pain.  The next morning my then significant other woke up before me and looked in my direction and saw me lying face up and on the right side of my neck Loki’s hind legs and tail pointed up in the air and on the left his forelimbs and head poked out and she thought “Oh my God, he’s finally squished the cat”.  During the night Loki had burrowed under my neck and had wrapped his body around my jaw to use his body’s warmth and his very energetic purring to take away the pain.  Amazingly I woke up with no pain.  Of course I soon made the mistake of getting up and deprived of the effects of Loki’s purr-infused embrace the pain soon returned but for the time that Loki watched over me he did take away the pain.

He had an incredible capacity for love and loved everyone and anything that was alive.  If he had ever met a mouse the only danger the mouse would have been in would probably have been from being hugged to death.  He also spent the very, vast majority of his life insanely ecstatically high on life.  He had a simple philosophy to life:  Being alive is an amazing thing; it’s something he chose to celebrate every chance he had.  He treated the good things in life as bonuses and except for when he grieved for his sister or was really sick nothing else in the rest of life outweighed the sheer joy of being alive.

There is a cloud over my head but it is neither dark nor stormy.  The memories of his life, his love, the lessons he taught me and the other gifts he has left me with are ensuring that this cloud is surrounded by a bright halo of golden sunlight.

Loki is being cremated; a Viking funeral is appropriate for a cat named after a Viking deity.  His ashes will be mixed with his sister Lucy’s.  He mourned her greatly after her loss and it is appropriate that they should be reunited.  Loki will live on forever in my heart and I know I will see him often in my dreams.