My Eulogy for Noel

Goodbye to a fine feline friend. 

 

    Mortality.  It is something that fascinates us and yet brings us terrible waves of dread.  At some time, at some point, on some level, we must face the icy grip of death in our lives.  I am preparing this brief statement as a eulogy of sorts for a great friend.  I am talking about a cat, a cat who changed a few lives and has passed from this earthly realm. 

    I am talking about Noel, aka. The Unit, aka. Stinklopede, aka. The Copper Cat, aka. Stink Nugget.  June 2, 2025, our furry companion has left us to chase that big laser pointer in the sky.  We shall miss him terribly, for he brought joy to all the lives he touched.  I will begin with a brief telling of his life story. 

    Noel spent his first few years with an owner who would pass away leaving Noel in the care of the folks who had him up for adoption in PetCo.  His first owner was the first brush with death our rambunctious little friend would have.  It was at that PetCo that my friend Alex would purchase him after he demonstrated a willingness to be extremely friendly to escape his caged existence.   

    From the day we brought him home, he was quite gregarious, eager to cuddle, and willing to sleep on my back and legs.  He must have been shown a lot of love to be so comfortable with people as he was.  Noel was always a big softie, though not without a spicy streak.  As Alex poked him around a little too much and Noel scratched his face something fierce.  I never got scratched by Noel once, but what can I say? I am very gentle and careful when handling the little guy. 

    Noel was with me for several years, but my living situation became unstable and the ability to provide him a home became tenuous.  My brother, who was equipped with a comfy place to live seemed an ideal candidate.  We agreed that he should stay with my brother Jesse for the while.  I am not sure how their time went exactly, but I am sure Noel won him over as he is keen on doing. 

    When I finally had a more solid living arrangement, it seemed like I was going to take Noel back, but I felt that my brother had become far too attached him.  Not to mention the fact that his house was still a far superior location for Noel’s overall wellbeing. After some reflection and honest soul searching, I decided that he would be most comfortable with my brother.  I did try to squeeze a little something for myself from my brother to make things official.  Since he was with my brother by choice long before any kind of transaction took place, I stand by my claim: “I would not sell that cat, not even for $50,000!”  Something I liked saying while gesturing with a finger wag. 

    In the end he succumbed to a series of debilitating seizures.  During those seizures, he hurt himself several times and grew sicker and sicker.  We gave him medication to try to alleviate the problem, but it was just not enough.  He was turning into an elderly guy, and the reality of his lifespan was too much to ignore.  He was suffering a great deal from his condition, and like all times when these decisions are made, he was put down.  Euthanasia.  Based on the Greek words of “good” and “death.”  This is what we wanted for him at this point.  We just wanted a comfortable and pleasant send off for such a great little fuzz monster. 

    The whole event gave me time to think about how these things that we cherish kind of float by us in life in our view, but with no way to truly hold.  It is like being in a museum where the whole of the world is displayed through a glass window keeping us separate from everything else.  While I could stay as often as I could in the “Noel exhibit,” sooner or later I would pass on to the other objects that consumed my time and interest.   

    I have these memories that will be part of who I am.  Like remnants of a physical phenomenon that turns to pictures in my mind and pictures on my phone.  As time goes by, the pictures and moments fade as we get older and things move farther and farther into the periphery of our understanding.  I want to cherish these memories of the cat, but it is still so tender that they bring tears to my eyes.  The thought of his cute little face with his little spot under his nose flashes to mind.  I carry that with me how I can.  While pictures on my phone or on the web exist, they must be tied to the memories in my head to form some type of meaning.  Without memory, they would just be pixels with no context. 

    They are more than images, however.  They are feelings, they are moments that roll like video clips in my head, they are sounds he made, and stories that live on whether I tell someone or simply retell myself to never forget his memory.  Epistemology is the study of how people learn things, assemble meaning of them, and retain them as memories in our heads.  It seems right to pause and consider this form of philosophy when pondering what the cat is to me right this moment. 

    In all my memories, I find myself pausing to consider Noel an autonomous agent with his own desires and will.  Whether it be seeking faucet water, curling up on the back of my knees, or howling for wet food, he demonstrated that his pursuits gave his life meaning, and made it a unique experience for himself and for a spectator like me.  I find an odd comfort in thinking about how the Copper Cat had his own view of reality and that his own life experiences made him the feline that he was before he left us. 

    Sometimes people feel hurt or angry when a loved one passes away.  It reminds them of the ephemeral nature of anything that they love.  This may seem like cosmic injustice that it gets ripped from us.  To that, I say that the limitations of mortality do not cheapen our experiences of love but strengthen them.  The fact that the poor cat left us, gives us a greater appreciation for the fact that he was here with us when he was.  Maybe there is a strange human need to keep around lifeforms that have a much shorter lifespan than themselves.  Maybe we feel we have a stronger bond to the mortal coil?  Maybe that is why elderly tortoises aren’t as popular as cats or dogs. 

    I believe it will take some time to shake off the full extent of losing Noel for me.  It is still hitting me in waves to process that he is really gone.  Maybe I would have liked to have been closer to him at the end, but maybe I am glad that the distance was there.  The last time I saw him having a severe episode, I did not find remotely appealing.   It is harder to watch someone you love suffer than to know that the game is finally over. 

    I guess the last point to consider is the transitory nature of death itself.  How death is not merely a binary of being “alive” or “dead.”  Death is a process in which parts of a body decay and cells and systems fail piece by piece.  It is almost as if death can be quantified rather than just understood as one state of being or another.  While we can recognize a certain finality of where he was before and after the euthanasia shot, we can also consider the transition differently.  The difference of adding the lethal dosage was not a matter of flipping a binary switch but accelerating that process of systemic failure within a bodily entity.  The cat simply lost things faster and faster. 

    This is why the aging process comes with health failure after health failure.  It is proof that death comes not all at once but ripping away tiny parts.  Perhaps this is how the phenomenon can be processed by each of us and by our shared perception of it.  How we feel ourselves dying versus watching someone else dying.  It never ceases to be tragic for it represents not just a transition, but a painful transition. Nothing in life seems scarier than that which is painful. 

    As we watched Noel progressively slide into that transition of leaving this world behind, we had time to accept his condition and emotionally prepare ourselves for it.  This is far more fortunate than a more traumatic experience such as being hit by a car.  I would try to take some solace that all of us (Noel included) took comfort in accepting that which is inevitable to all mortal creatures.  

    I wish you goodbye from this world Noel.  Stink Nugget as my brother, and others called him.  Though I admit, I was always a bit envious that my brother’s nickname was more commonplace than my own.  I still say that cat was uniquely copper.  With that we send your remains and memories to the annals of history.  We move forward better than we were yesterday because you touched our lives.   

 

Goodbye Copper Cat, you shall be missed.