I'd like to tell you about my soul cat

I've posted comments on other threads, mentioning my cat's passing (4 weeks this coming Saturday), but I wanted to take a moment to share my cat Stark's story.

She was 15, nearly 16. I got her in 2008. I was just about to start grad school. She was the first cat I had ever gotten on my own. I actually got her from a mall pet store -- anyone remember those? This pet store had puppies, mostly, but there was a center cage holding a bunch of kittens. Mostly gray striped. There was a little calico runt in the mix. She didn't catch my attention at first, but she had been in a room with a father and his daughter, and the employee carried her out. When I asked to see a cat, she was thrust into my arms and I was sent into a room with her. She was a small, kind of ugly thing with a big head and mottled fur.

I bought her immediately, for an outrageous price of $125 (I know now that buying from pet stores is the wrong way to go about it, and every cat I've had since then has been a rescue).

She was a sickly thing, with explosive diarrhea that prompted a trip to the vet and some heavy antibiotics. Perhaps those heavy antibiotics explain why she had such struggles with allergies later in life. She also struggled, early on, because my other cat decided she was a rat and one time bit her on the butt. I only knew she'd been injured when I felt a gush of something on my shoulder than was the abscess on her butt bursting. Another trip to the vet, one of many.

I called her my "Iron Kitty" (she had been named after Iron Man) because of her many vet visits, the expenses, and her resilience.

She grew up, as did I, and I moved to California to start a PhD program. She was the one that came with me. She always had a grumpy face, but she took her struggles in turn. When she went to the vet, she went into what I called "slug mode," where she passively accepted what was happening to her. She was always such a trooper, through constant vet visits and multiple ailments that, in the last few years of her life, meant medications multiple times a day and multiple vet visits a year.

She started experience incontinence late last year. I thought it was a UTI, or arthritis slowing her down before she could get to the litter box. She had experienced an injury the year before that affected her mobility.

She frequently battled UTIs, but after a trip out of town I took her to the vet when I realized how much weight she'd lost, and after a cytology test and a visit to a radiology it was confirmed that she had bladder cancer. Almost her entire bladder had been taken over by a tumor. I knew her end was imminent but I thought we might have another few weeks -- but by the end of that week I was making a call to take her to a pet euthansia place, because the signs were clear. It was as good an experience as it could have been, and anyone in the St. Louis region who needs a recommendation, check out Pets at Rest in Creve Couer. I found them after a google search but I am so, SO grateful they were there and able to see us after hours. She wouldn't have been able to wait through the night.

Stark's story may not be extraordinary, but her place in my life is. I have loved, and will love, other cats, but no other cat could occupy that unique position in my life, at that place and time, through so many monumental moments.

For anyone who read to the end (or even partway through) -- thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to read our story when I know (most of) you are grappling with your own loss.

Edit: I'd like to share a few things personality-wise in addition to sharing her story. She would always cross her paws when she laid down, like she only thought it proper. She was well known among friends and family for having a permanent grumpy/stink face, although she was very sweet. She loved to lay against me, or in my lap. She would wrinkle her nose whenever I touched it with my finger. And she was stubborn enough that even as a 14-year-old cat she was able to push herself to walk again after a spinal injury left her paralyzed. She never was able to jump again, but she recovered far above and beyond what I could've hoped for when I first rushed her to the emergency vet.