This time of year 15 years ago, I was living in an apartment with my then-boyfriend, in my senior year of college, and pretending I was all grown up. My then-boyfriend was this big, Italian New Yorker who had a soft spot for kitties. Never would have thought it to look at him, but it was true. In May of our year of living together, we decided to get a kitten. A friend of my mom's had a daugther who had a cat who had some kittens - you know the drill.

We ended up with a teeney tiny black furball that we named Delta. From the get-go, Delta was a little spitfire. She liked to climb you from your ankles to your shoulder when you least expected it, like, oh, when you were frying something at the stove, or brushing your teeth. Fun times like that. Then she would perch on your shoulder and let you carry her around the house, I think so she could see life from a different perspective.

I took Delta for her first vet visit to get all the shots and to make an appointment to have her declawed and spayed. Only, it turned out, that the spaying would have to be neutering, because Delta was actually a boy.

We had a small identity crisis for a while deciding whether to keep the name Delta. In the end, I couldn't do it. Delta just seemed girly to me. So Delta became Logan. Logan liked to sleep curled up in my hair on my pillow, and came to greet me every day at the door, meowing at me until I picked him up and carted him around on my shoulder.

College ended, the relationship with the big Italian guy did, too, and I kept the cat. Logan never was what you would call warm and cuddly. He liked you to pet him, but only as long as he felt like it, and then he would bite you. He had a fondness for all things dairy - milk, ice cream, pudding, yogurt... if you finished it, he'd be there to lick the bowl. He also had a tendency toward bladder infections, which led to some cat mistakes in areas outside the litter box, such as in the bathtub, on a friend's pillow, and inside my sister's new down winter coat. My dad helped me take him to the vet on one such occasion, and ended up in the ER with an antibiotic IV for the infection from the bite Logan gave him.

The years passed, and Logan and I grew older together. We survived the roommate from hell, moving a million times, good boyfriends, bad boyfriends, finally finding The One, getting married, adding to our animal family, and bringing a little girl into the mix. Through it all, he'd still perch on my shoulder from time to time, and always, always would he be there when I finished my cereal.

About six months ago, I noticed that Logan wasn't his usual rotund self (no animal in my house is skinny - shocker, I know). He got thinner and thinner, and moved less and less quickly. About two weeks ago, he began to get very tentative about his movements, and I discovered that he could no longer see. Over the past few days, he ate less and less and slept more and more. Today was the day that I finally took him to the vet. He bit me, for old times sake I'd like to think, and gave the vet techs a run for their money when they tried to sedate him. But in the end, he just let go. And I guess I have to as well.

Goodbye, Mr. Logan - I love you so much and I will always miss you.