In Memory of Little Man

We took Little Man, one of our two cats, to the vet today to be put to sleep. He had Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP). Read the link if you want to know what that is, but basically it’s kind of mysterious and fatal, and you never really know for sure if they have it, and it’s rare. But it’s also the second time one of the cats we’ve gotten from the Charlottesville SPCA got the disease, so apparently it’s not all that rare.

It was a really sad day. But being the fighter that he was, Little Man stayed relatively healthy for quite a long time compared to most cats with FIP, and, though we were hopeful, we had kind of anticipated this conclusion for a while. I guess that makes it easier. Our last cat with FIP, Jackson, got sick pretty quickly so his death was more of a shock and consequently harder to deal with.

At the same time, we had Little Man with us for a longer time (about a year and a half) and I had gotten used to him being here. He was exceptionally sweet and mild-mannered. Very affectionate, he always loved human contact and never jumped or drew away if you tried to pet him. And, boy, did he purr loudly.

I put up some pictures on my Picasa page. Now, let me just warn you that it’s kind of a scary-ton of cat pictures. I included some pictures of Layla for comic relief. They’re both black and white, but Layla’s the huge one.