Zeus leaves, sadly

On August 21, 2005 I wrote about getting Zeus from my my friend Heather as she was going to give him away.  Zeus and I had a little bit of a rocky start as I noted in that post but he has been a great cat ever since.  He was always a lap cat to the extreme, always wanting to sit in your lap even if there was a laptop or something else already there.  When he couldn't sit on your lap because you were in bed he would lay on your head or next to you on the pillow.  I admit that at times I pushed him off, but he was always there to give you affection.  A few months ago we found out that he had feline AIDS or FIV.  Because of this we had to take away on of his favorite things which was going outside.  He had become even more creative in sneaking out whenever the door was opened since then.  He put up the arrival of Kelly's cats almost a year ago and then Narnia last fall.  He often would remind Narnia whose house it was by giving Narnia a whack as he walked by.  Tonight at about 8:30 PM he died of what was apparently a blood clot / stroke.  He was sleeping on the couch and then coughed strangely almost as if he was choking.  Kelly and I were sitting on the couch and I looked at him and his eyes just seemed dead.  I tried to nudge him and got no reaction.  Kelly then jumped up and grabbed him and we raced to the Pet ER.  We got there in minutes but they could do nothing for him.  They said he did not react at all to CPR or drugs.  After about 20 minutes from the point he coughed we told them to stop trying to recover him.  The picture below was taken only a few hours before he died.  He died sleeping almost exactly as pictured.  He will be missed.