Mo, ?–2019

Mo was a very mellow, friendly, charcoal gray fellow who passed late last year. A remembrance is something I have been meaning to write ever since.

Mo became part of my family on New Year’s Eve 2010. I was living with my parents at the time, and our house had been cat-less since Scooter passed the month before. My sister told us about a cute, affectionate cat at her friend’s farm near West Branch. He appeared one day a few months earlier and had hung around. His front paws were declawed and he was missing an incisor. My sister’s friend fed him off and on but not enough, and she did not want to take him inside. He was obviously a house cat and would likely die during the winter if not adopted.

Though sympathetic, we were unsure of taking him in, uncertain if we would ever get another pet—or at least I was. It was hard to lose a four-legged loved one, and I was unwilling to commit myself again, or at least so soon after Scooter’s death. However, my sister had a different plan.

Before we ventured out for New Year’s Eve celebrations, my sister took my mom for a drive and did not say where they were going. A little while later, after a surprise trip to my sister’s friend’s farm, they returned with Mo.

He was a tiny cat compared to Scooter, who tipped the scales at 21 pounds. Mo climbed the stairs slowly, which, along with the strands of white hair peppered throughout his fur, made us think he was pretty old. However, we soon realized that Mo was emaciated and weak after months of eating kibble irregularly and not being able to hunt. (We assume he was unable to hunt successfully since he had no front claws and was missing an incisor.) He weighed four pounds when we took him to the vet a few days later. However, he gained weight and strength quickly with a bowl of food available whenever he was hungry.

His past was unknown. My sister’s friend said Mo appeared soon after a car with Missouri license plates passed the farm a couple times, so we assumed Mo had been dumped in the country. Perhaps his owner had died and relatives did not want to take care of him. He was super chill and friendly, and nothing ever bothered him, so we often wondered if he was someone’s therapy pet. Along with his missing teeth (the vet found he was missing more than one), his tail never rose above his spine and had a kink, and he had a bow-legged gait in his hind legs. Had he been abused in the past? The possibility was hard to imagine, but it made us love him more and want to make his life with us as comfortable and blessed as possible.

His original name was also unknown. My sister’s friend’s kids gave him a name I can’t remember, but we renamed him. The task of picking a name fell to me since my sister named our previous two cats. Since he supposedly arrived in a car with Missouri plates, I named him Moe after T.J. Moe, a wide receiver for Missouri who had 15 catches for 152 yards in an Insight Bowl loss to Iowa just a few days earlier. (Replay reversed what would have been his 16th reception on a fourth-down play late in the game.) It’s an unusual namesake, but I thought it was a worthwhile connection. The receptionists at the vet spelled his name without an E, though, so I decided his secondary namesake would be Missouri’s postal abbreviation, MO.

(I eventually learned Mo’s Missouri connection is uncertain. My sister’s friend did not recall a car with Missouri plates, so I’m unsure where that part of Mo’s story originated. I like to stick to it, however, because of his name.)

We did not know his age, either, though the vet said he was likely born in 2006 or 2007 based on the wear of the teeth he had. We decided to make his birthday December 31.

Mo loved playing with strings and hanging out outside on the three-season deck on humid summer days. (He really wanted to venture around outside and got out a few times. I once tracked him down in a neighbor’s backyard thanks to the alarmed chirping of birds.) Probably most of all, he loved sleeping between my dad’s legs in the recliner. He had insanely thick fur and left tons of “Mo-hair” everywhere, especially on his favorite napping places. He spoke with a distinctive “merrr.” He had many nicknames, and we usually called him Mo Boy. He became a good older brother to Russell when she came into our lives.



He became diabetic at a certain point, so we gave him daily shots of insulin. However, his diabetes went away toward the end of his life. He was a good, though impatient, alarm clock every morning, eager to eat the treat of wet food we gave him with every shot.

Late last year, unfortunately, Mo developed pancreatitis. He stopped eating and drinking, and his kidneys began to shut down. He was not in good shape and would not recover. To save him from further suffering, we made the hard decision to put him down. So the day after Thanksgiving in 2019, after a rest between my dad’s legs in the recliner, we took him to the vet but did not bring him home.

Mo was such a nice and beloved cat, and I still feel bad about what happened to him. He was the first pet I have euthanized, and I feel extremely uncomfortable about the fact that we killed him. That’s what euthanasia is; the definition on my laptop’s dictionary is “the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma.” My head and my heart were and still are very conflicted about it. It was the logical thing to do—to think about him, to save him—but it also feels illogical to painlessly kill a loved one. Thinking about it now makes me cry.

My parents received his ashes, an imprint of his paw, and some of his fur later. At some point, I want to put his ashes in the soil of a plant that will live on the deck during the summer, so he can be outside all the time.

Rest in peace, Mo Boy.