Lucca(2007 to 2025)

Lucca is always right

Lucca was a Maine coon mix with an explorer's energy. He would wander the halls of the house, exploring every nook and cranny, not wanting to leave anything to the unknown. When stressed, he would meow up at corners, try to get as high as possible, and at times, spray to leave his scent so all knew of his presence. When happy, he would lie in the sun in his cat tree, eat until he could eat no more, and groom his younger brother Rilke.

One of my favorite Lucca memories is from 2022. We lived on the second floor of an apartment building near east Burnside in Portland, Oregon. One evening Lucca made it past our backdoor and found himself in the stairwell. He ran down the stairs with his trademark trill rhythmically bouncing up and down with each step he took. He reached the bottom of the stairwell and encountered a door. With nowhere else to go, he ran back up the stairs, trilling the whole way back up, trrl trrrl until he returned to the apartment.

When Lucca was young, he got into a scuffle with some neighborhood cats and ended up with a claw in his eyeball. His owner at the time opted to have his eye surgically corrected instead of enucleated (removed). His owner says:

The former option would have meant no more outdoor time for him which, as y'all well know, would not have worked well with Lucca's adventurous spirit (very glad we opted for surgery and that it went as well as it did).

Lucca was there on the best day of my life. On a night in June 2019, we sat on the couch in our living room and my partner Cat turned to me and said, "well we're all here". I was confused, and Cat said, "you, me, Lucca, and Rilke". That was my family. Through covid, surgeries, moving cross country, depression, anxiety, and everything life throws at you, we did it the four of us.

It took Cat and me a while to realize a fundamental truth: Lucca is always right. When Lucca refused to eat his food, and we would try everything we could to get him to eat, he was the one who was right: the food was utter crap and bad for him. Lucca had an instinct for people; when he'd warm to someone quickly, we knew they were kind and careful and someone we could trust. And even at the end, Lucca knew well before we did what was happening.

Lucca lived to be over 17 years old. In his final days, he suffered from irritable bowel disease and a cancerous growth on the bridge of his nose. He continued to do many of the things that made him happiest until his last moments.

In his last afternoon, Lucca sat on Cat's lap for a few hours, his head hanging off the side, which seemed to be the most comfortable position for his body at the time. Right before 7pm on April 7, 2025, Lucca took his final breaths.

It's a needless detail for an obituary like this, but: He was lying on his rectangular cardboard in front of the couch when the vet arrived. He got up, greeted her, and then returned to his cardboard to lie down. Those were his last steps, his last greeting. Exploring until the very end.

Cat and I learned so much from Lucca. We learned how to be confident in ourselves, our feelings, and our situation. We learned how it's okay to feel anxious but still engage with the situation. We learned that it's good to express our anxieties and frustrations in ways that are natural to us. And we learned how to work with and interpret someone with such a strong sense of self and self-interest.