RIP Vanillie the Cat

Ariel and Vanilli
(For the VI On the left is the head of Vanilli the Cat. He has a white muzzle, yellowish green eyes and grey fur. On the left is Ariel who is wearing glasses. The glare behind them is a window making it hard to see Ariel)

Our sixteen year old cat Vanilli passed away yesterday. He had some health problems including a thyroid problem we were treating him for but yesterday his health went from OK to crash in a couple of hours. We took him to the local emergency animal hospital but there was nothing to be done.

This is the first pet Caroline has lost so she is taking it pretty hard.

I found out about Vanilli and his brother Millie when I was stage managing Tony and Tina’s Wedding up in Buffalo NY. I made my daily call home to be informed that I had gotten a cat while I was away being Milli and Ariel had gotten a cat being Vanilli. They had gone to one of the no kill shelters to get a cat and walked out with two brothers. The reason the girls named them Milli and Vanilli was that they didn’t meow or make sounds so they figure that they hired someone else to do it for them.

Vanilli was one of the most mellow cats I have ever met. He loved to be petted and skritched. You could pound on him pretty hard and all he would do is purr and ask for more. Vanilli was the cat that Caroline learned to pet cats on. He had infinite patience with her. He would go to her and get pets even when she would be a little rough. Every morning he would go to Caroline to get his morning skritches before she went off to school. He was the cat in the “if you strap buttered bread on the back of a cat and drop him, will the bread land butter side up?” experiment. He loved attention. He was the cat for people who weren’t sure if they liked cats. I know he was the first cat a number of children petted through the years.

He was a bit of a pain when there was human food out. He was a mooch of the grandest order even if he didn’t get anything. I think it was a game to him called “get the human food”. He loved tuna and turkey and steak. He liked lettuce. He probably ate other things that I didn’t know about but protein was his passion.

He was not the sharpest crayon in the box. I had to extract him from places he got himself into and couldn’t get out of. Sometimes he thought he could walk through closed doors and was surprised when he couldn’t. He had a lot of “I meant to do that” cat looks in his life. But he was big and cuddly and didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He took it in stride when Fig came into the pack since she picked him as her playmate and jumped on his head while honing her hunting skills. He was our big clueless idiot who we loved very much and we miss very much.

This morning none of us are getting bumped for head scritchs or having our hair chewed or having a large cat try to sit on our shoulders. There isn’t a purring fur ball at my hip like so many other mornings. There is a Vanilli sized hole in our house and our hearts


(Vanillie the Cat For the VI: This is Vanilli stretched out on the couch with his white paws on an art pad that has a picture of a cat on it that Caroline drew. His belly is white as are his paws and his muzzle. The rest of his fur is a tiger striped grey.)

We love you and will miss you big guy.

I am grateful that I had Vanilli in my life.