We had Chewie since the day he was born under my living room couch. His wretched mother, TK-421, was a stray cat that we were attempting to put through a foster program. When we first entered her in, we expressed our concern that she might be pregnant. They said they'd do tests at her first vet appointment... she had the kittens under the couch the night before her appointment.
He was dubbed Chewbacca because 1) he wasn't white like his mother or siblings, and 2) Eric actually had to rescue him from his gross amniotic sack because, well, TK-421 was not a very good mother. So the orange kitten had a life debt to Eric. (In case you were curious, his siblings are named Tauntaun and Wampa.)
Last summer he very suddenly and rapidly got sick due to what we later suspected was FIP. After several incredibly stressful weeks of doing everything we could to try to get him better, it eventually became clear that there wasn't anything we could do.
The day we had him put to sleep was incredibly hard - I had never experienced anything like it before, such an incredible feeling of loss and helplessness in regards to something that I never expected to have such an emotional impact. After stumbling out of the vet's office, we numbly walked into a bar around the corner from our house for a drink to sit and sorrow over.
We belly up to the bar and order a beer and a shot of whiskey each. The bartender, one of the many Yinzer men who look exactly like my dad, looks at us - slouched, with red faces and puffy eyes - and says, "Okay, I'll give you this one drink, but that's all."
Then we had to explain that, no, we were not in fact completely hammered in the middle of the day...
Godspeed, good buddy.
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