Loki Moyer, 2-25-2013 to 1-19-2025The three faces of Loki... we miss you so much. We lost a very beloved family member this month. Words cannot even express our incredible sadness over the fact that our sweet Loki is no longer with us.
Last year, he began losing weight. But, he’d always been a big boy at around 19 pounds, BUT he was also a very long, large cat. He could stand on his hind legs and reach things on the dining table, he could stand on his hind legs and grab the edge of plates on the kitchen counter… built like a little horse when he was little, we even even measured his tail once and found it to be 13 inches long. Solid black, with sleek, short hair, his huge orange eyes were nearly human. For such a big kitty, it was funny that his meow was less of a meow, and more of a high-pitched squeak. He was 100% love. He got along with all the other kitties since he came home, and back then, we had two sister rats, Candy and Clover, and he especially loved hanging out with them. At the time the three were about the same size. Then he quickly outgrew them, and then he outgrew everyone else. Loki was born in a litter of roly-poly black kittens, to a family who was living in an apartment at a storage facility in Longview, Washington. I found them online, after searching for black kittens, because we had seen the Avengers, and Mama had a crush on Loki. And I wanted a black kitty to name Loki for my birthday in April that year… and this family’s litter was set to go around that time. It’s funny how one thing or another leads to great things, because there were two families who had black kittens that answered my query – but Loki’s litter would be ready to go home first, so I went to meet her and see her kittens first. The woman was a little scattered, living in a storage facility with who-knows-how-many little kids… when she opened the door to their apartment, there was nothing but noise and chaos coming out of it, but she came back with this adorable, tiny black kitten with huge eyes. BUT – it wasn’t Loki! It was a little girl! The woman said she’d tried to catch him, but couldn’t, but she caught his sister and she swore that the two were identical. We were sold. LOL We agreed to come back and then we stayed in touch on Facebook until the kittens were old enough to come home. Bringing him home was so exciting. A little scrap of a kitten, he was into everything, loved everyone, and played until he dropped. Naming him after Loki was exactly the right thing to do, because he was definitely the Kitten of Mischief! He also loved ice cubes! Every time anyone came in to get ice, he would hear the fridge door and coming running, hoping for one to fall to the floor. Then, he’d bat it all over the floor forever, leaving it somewhere to finally melt into a surprise puddle for someone’s sock. He also loved playing in the fridge whenever anyone opened the door! He’d dive into the open space, then start rolling around inside the open door, refusing to move. Purring and squeaking and merping the whole time. We’d beg him to move so we could shut the door, but the answer was usually no. And, his other favorite thing was to reach up and pull the tea towels off the handle of the oven, or from the fridge handle if someone had hung one there. Up on his back paws, streeeetch, grab the towel, and down it came. The number of times I’d come into the kitchen to all the towels on the floor…. Another of his tricks was every night, he would check every surface – every table, the coffee table, every desk, every counter, and look for anything to knock off of it. Pens seemed to be a favorite target. So, then we started leaving pens all around on purpose, and they’d all be on the floor in the morning. He was such a good man. Such a handsome man. He soon gravitated toward our daughter Mary, and then they were best friends. That continued his entire life. She always signed her cards, “Love, Mary and Loki” Their birthdays were only two weeks apart, which was also fun – February meant their birthdays were finally here again. (Irony: Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki in the Marvel movies, was also born in February… in fact, he and Mary’s birthdays are side by side.) One of his scarier tricks was during a slumber party for Emily’s birthday one year in the Buttercup Cottage when we lived in Astoria, Oregon, Loki managed to slip out a bedroom window! All the kids in the house, especially all night, was too much, and he found one of Emily’s old windows in her closet that had no screen. Somehow, he squeezed out the smallest crack, and was just… gone. OMG That was Saturday night. We looked and looked and called for him all Sunday, and all Monday. We lived in downtown Astoria, but our house backed up on a long forested green space. We were all terrified. He was maybe 4 at this point? We had no idea if he would ever find his way home. Monday night, I was beside myself with sadness and worry, and I was in my bed and thought I heard him outside our window!! I got up and ran to the window, and it was him!!! He’d somehow figured out how to get to our bedroom window, and I got it open and yanked him inside the house. The relief I felt was nothing compared to Mary’s reaction. We were up for a while, trying to clean him off. He was covered in tree sap and dirt and we don’t know what else, and we gave him food and water and he ate like crazy, telling us all about his adventures. That was scary!! A few years later, when we lived in Roseburg in SW Oregon, we had an even bigger scare. Loki became very sick and we had no clue what was happening. He was only 5, and then it came down to – he had a blockage from crystals in his urine! Unless treated, that is a death sentence to a kitty, and so we were really scared. They couldn’t do anything more for him, so Mary and I took him and drove 90 miles north to an emergency vet in Springfield, Oregon. I didn’t know where I was going, we had nothing with us like food or water or anything, and this place wasn’t really near anything, and we were both so afraid we were going to lose him, and I was terrified of what it was going to cost… they saved him. It was thousands of dollars. And it took hours. It was past midnight, we’d had nothing to eat…. The entire night was a complete nightmare, but he was alive. We couldn’t pay for it, and had no credit card or anything. Early on, I realized we were in trouble and I got on Facebook and screamed for help. And my friends all came through. Money poured into the vet’s office and his estimate was paid and then they did what they needed to do to save his life. I still owe everyone who helped us so much… I lost track of my small list of those I knew about, but the people who called the vet – I didn’t have any of their names because the vet wouldn’t tell me who they were! So, from then on, whenever anyone in my circle said they needed help with an animal bill, or something for their child or the classroom, I helped with whatever I could. Pay it forward, am I right? Loki survived and thrived. And he made it from Oregon to North Carolina with our other five kitties, even though eight days in the car was NOT fun, but we all made it. That was in 2023. In 2024, he started losing weight. But he was so happy and hanging out downstairs more, and he was being so social and playing with the other cats, sleeping in cat trees… something he couldn’t do when he was 19 pounds. But, I was concerned, and so we started blood tests and all that. But nothing was ever really showing up. Closer to Christmas, he was really losing weight and it was getting more concerning. The vet thought this, or maybe this, he was on antibiotics, and then more blood tests. And then an X-ray, and then finally an ultrasound. Maybe it was abdominal cancer, maybe it was wet FIP… we even got the first half of that treatment and started those pills, but it felt like all of it was too little, too late. We were losing our man, he was losing his fight with whatever it was that was taking him away from us. And that was breaking our hearts. On Saturday, two days after starting the FIP meds, I was syringe-feeding him over four hours, but when I went up to Mary’s room at 1 a.m. to try and feed him anything, I knew it was bad. We petted him and told him we loved him, but it was just too much. He passed around 1:30 a.m., but he knew we were there, he was with his family, and we knew he was no longer in pain. I have never cried this much over losing a kitty. It’s been days and I still can’t believe he is gone. I think of the kitties who have gone before him, and we’re taking comfort in knowing that they are up there in Kitty Heaven, together, running and playing, sleeping in the shade while my mom rocks in a rocker reading a book. My brother and grandmother are there too, Kitty Heaven, that great meadow in the sky. But the house feels empty. And there are nine of us still here. My heart has hurt for days, Mary and I even crashed in the living room last night because sleeping in her room by herself was just too hard last night. We all miss him so much.
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