Hoss

by Cherie
(Greensburg, PA)

My little buddy Hoss (2005 - 2014 R.I.P. little boy...Gone too soon)

I adopted Hoss from the local Humane Society in August of 2005.

I entered a room full of kittens in search of a companion for a grieving and depressed cat at home who had just lost his best feline buddy.

Out of all the kittens in the room (probably about 50 of them...all different colors, sizes and personalities), Hoss came up to me as I was knelt down on the floor and he climbed up in my lap and put his purring little self right in my face.

At that moment, without hesitation, I KNEW he was the one.

I took him home and he quickly became the center of my world. His presence was never demanding but always felt. He was my "cat dog".

He knew his name and came running when I called him. He was not a pesky lap cat, but had a way of inching half way across a book I was reading, or pawing at my knee when he wanted tuna and I had my head buried in the computer.

He was at the door to greet me every time I came home, and he found his way under the covers when I went to sleep at night. Always purring. Always content. Always the picture of health.

I figured I'd have about 20 good years with Hoss, as this was how long my first cat lived before I said that final goodbye.

Unfortunately, this past February, I woke to find Hoss gasping for breath on my bathroom floor. I rushed him to an emergency vet hospital thinking he was having a bad reaction to the vaccinations he had a few days before. He was in bad shape...They put a catheter in him, hooked him up to an IV and rested him in an oxygen cage overnight pending an EKG the next morning.

I wasn't prepared for the call I got from the vet the next day. Hoss was suffering from cardiomyopathy and was in congestive heart failure.

I was offered the chance to bring him home and administer heart meds, water pills, and blood thinners twice a day for the rest of his life. I accepted that offer and picked him up that night after work.

He didn't like pills being thrown down his throat twice a day, but accepted it, and made leaps and bounds toward a miraculous recovery for the next month and a half.

For unknown reasons, on April 16th, he relapsed back into congestive heart failure, and after hearing the vet's analysis and future outlook on his quality of life, I had to make the most heartbreaking choice of my life...to let him go, peacefully. He was purring even as he was being taken to be put to rest. My heart was broken into a million pieces.

I loved this little guy more than my words can express, and I would like to get your opinion from his pics and what I've described in his personality to see if you think he was a full Maine Coon.

If you think he was, I sure would like to eventually get another Maine Coon. Not to replace him, because I never could, but to fill a void that's been left in my life. I currently have two other cats (one ferral, the other came with the house I rent), but the closeness that Hoss brought with the other two has disappeared since his passing.

Thanks for reading my lengthy post...Cherie :)