Pet Tribute Wall

My little heart. My little Porchy.

In July of 2025, this little girl showed up on our back porch, almost as if she had zeroed in on us. You went from being “stray kitty,” to “porch kitty,” and finally, Porchy. Nick is still annoyed that the name Porchy stuck, but somehow, it just fit. After transitioning from being an outdoor cat to an indoor kitty, you soon made friends with our other cats, fitting into our family like a missing puzzle piece. Before long, you became another little heartbeat I lived for. You never picked fights. You never scratched up the furniture. You seemed to understand exactly what indoor life was supposed to be. You attached yourself to me in ways my other kitties never had. Your purr and your constant presence calmed and grounded me in ways I still can’t put into words. You had a way of looking directly into my eyes as though you could see straight into my soul. You were my little Porchy. A piece of my heart without any doubt. On June 21, 2026, I brought you to AVES because something was terribly wrong. You had suddenly become profoundly weak, were losing weight rapidly, and were having difficulty standing and jumping. After extensive diagnostic testing, you were diagnosed with advanced large-cell lymphoma, an aggressive cancer of the gastrointestinal tract. My little Porchy world came crashing down. But you were a fighter through and through. Your little body endured chemotherapy, medications, hospitalization, and two blood transfusions as we fought to give you every chance we could. We tried everything we reasonably could to give you more time and help your body fight back against the cancer. But despite everything we threw at that bastard cancer, your body eventually couldn’t keep up. On September 9, 2026, we learned that the lymphoma had progressed further into your abdomen and was no longer responding to treatment. There was even fluid developing around the affected areas, and your little body was becoming dangerously weak from the anemia. We knew we couldn’t ask you to keep fighting when the fight had become suffering. So we made the hardest decision imaginable. We let you go. You passed peacefully at AVES at approximately 4:00 PM, in my arms, with Nick beside us. And even at the very end, you knew me. When I walked into the room, you heard my voice and immediately meowed for me. You came into my lap, and you purred while I held you. I promised you that I would be with you until the end, and I kept that promise. You loved so many wonderfully strange things. You drank water from the bathtub instead of the perfectly good bowls we gave you. You peed in the tub for reasons that remain known only to Porchy. You threw yourself into the refrigerator whenever deli meat or rotisserie chicken appeared. You loved warm beds, patches of sunshine, your feline friends, and always having a full belly. And somehow, even while cancer was taking your strength away, you still wanted to be part of everything. You fought like hell. And your strength gave me strength. Both Nick and I were there when you took your final breath. You were loved profoundly, right until the very end, and you always will be. My little heartbeat, Porchy… You were loved. You were safe. You were home. I love you.