Remembering Pixel, One Year Later

[Content warning: Memorial post for my cat, including talk about pet death]

Our cat Pixel died last year on August 15 (previous memorial post). His health declined so rapidly and we were actually waiting on someone to euthanize Pixel the next day, but he passed away overnight, before they arrived. 😢😫 Without getting into all the details, his passing was a shock to my system. It took me a long time to reach a state where I could look at his pictures or videos and not be utterly devastated. I couldn't write my memorial post for him until a month had passed. Even one year later, I'm still wrangling with the grief. I hope as time passes, I can focus on remembering all of the good times with him, without the emotional carnage of his illness and sudden passing dragging them down. 

Pixel was such an active, feisty, silly, neurotic, photogenic cat. Compared to Sprite, he liked his alone time, but he was never completely aloof or separated from us while hanging out around the house. His meows were expressive and sometimes loud, especially when it was dinnertime. 😆

He was always alert, with big, bright eyes, watching over things.

He liked certain strategic spots around the house where he could easily surveil the surroundings. In his younger years, that meant spots up high, like on our fridge, or on shelving units we used as room dividers.

He was also constantly hanging out on the top shelf of my home office shelves, which was nice when I was working from home during lockdown, and after.

As I mentioned before, he was feisty. Both he and Sprite knew how to play with us without scratching or biting, but sometimes when he got really riled up, he'd accidentally not be gentle, especially if we were running our hands underneath a bedsheet or something like that. That was when he became a hunter. 😅 I thought of Pixel as a cheetah since he was lithe and prone to speeding around the house when he was riled up.

He was also an acrobat, bouncing off walls while playing with toys or running after his brother Sprite. He could even run up the front of the fridge to get to the top in his younger days when we first moved out to California (I wish I'd gotten a video of this). He'd run around corners like a "drift kitty", taking advantage of extra grip on the rugs over hardwood floors. Luckily when he got the "zoomies" they weren't really destructive, but they sure were funny! Sometimes Pixel would randomly stare at a random spot on the wall a couple feet above him and leap at it, yowling, and then run away. :smh:

During play sessions, chasing after some toy on a string, he would often play so hard he'd tire himself out mightily and plop down on his side to rest. And sometimes he wouldn't want the toy to be put away, so he'd try to run away with it, or refuse to open his mouth and let the toy go. 😆

We had this humungous cat plush toy, similar in size to a medium bean bag chair, and for some reason Pixel would chew on its tail and ears, but also he'd viciously attack it, even drag it around by the tail. Did he actually see this as a huge cat "enemy"? 🤔 Once we saw the plush toy dragged up the stairs in our old house, which puzzled us because the plush was, like, at least 10x larger than Pixel...! Sadly I can't find photographic evidence of this.

Pixel was always a picky eater, so his appetite and preferences usually drove both the kitties' diet. We didn't give the kitties huge amounts of human food, but he (and Sprite) liked things like bits of salmon sashimi, bits of canned tuna, shredded cheddar cheese, and "naughtier" snacks like tiny bits of Cheetos, Pringles, or Cheez-Its. 😅 I knew whenever I opened these snacks, Pixel and Sprite would be begging. (Before anyone scolds, I would usually give them tiny pieces, just as a little taste. 😜)

Weirdly Pixel seemed to get aggressive after we let them walk around our backyard leashed when we moved into our current house. We thought that since they were indoor cats, it'd be cool to let them have more outdoor time now that we had a fenced backyard with this place, but we observed that Pixel would get snarly and instigate more fights with Sprite after smelling all the stray cat smells in the yard, so we didn't let him go outside that much after that. A few times we let him hang out in the egg chairs supervised, when we found out he liked laying in them.

Despite being able to stand his ground when he and Sprite would wrestle and play fight (sometimes getting vicious enough we'd have to step in), Pixel wouldn't stop Sprite from eating his food. It made feeding them kind of annoying, as we'd always have to be vigilant of Sprite horning in and stealing Pixel's food. 🤦‍♀️

Pixel would sometimes stare very intently at us. Often it was because he wanted something, like food, but other times, he was just being weird. We got used to it. 😆

Most of the time, on the rare occasions we'd have visitors, Pixel would be the brave one staying within view of guests, and cautiously approaching them sometimes after acclimating. Sprite would already be hiding in another room 99% of the time after hearing the doorbell or a knock on the door. But if kids were involved, Pixel would likely be hiding, too, as they both kind of had a traumatic experience when we had people over when we still lived in the Chicago 'burbs, and several young kids were too excited when they saw our cats. 😨

Between the two cats, Pixel "blepped" (left his tongue sticking out) more than Sprite did. What a derp! Please enjoy. 😄

On the flip side, more often than not, Pixel was effortlessly chic – our "model kitty" who looked portrait-ready even when it was a regular day.

I have lots of pictures of him as a "model", but sometimes, because Sprite was more likely to be snuggling nearby, I'd have phases when I took more pictures of Sprite during a day because Pixel was in another room enjoying his alone time. 

We're not ready to adopt another kitty or pair of kitties yet. But whenever that may happen, I hope they're as fun and silly and cute and ridiculous and attitude-y as Pixel was. I'll love and miss him always.