Shark: 1993-2007


Shark being petted by me. 

Shark came to be my cat when I found him in a store in Ann Arbor in 1994. The owner had to get rid of him before moving the store, so we brought him home to live with us.

Shark sitting on the stair landing.

Being a cat, he was more photogenic than, say, me, so there are more pictures of him than of me on this site.

He was always a bit skittish - witness his fear of the stuffed tiger:

Often you'd try to pet him, and he'd startle at the touch. Sometimes this even happened when he already knew someone was there, and he was being petted just a second before!


Here is Shark asleep...
Shark lays upside down in the window.

...and here you see how he liked to play!
Six pictures of Shark playing, mostly him in the air.

These pictures were taken when he was still pretty young; he got quite a bit chubbier when he got older, and didn't go flying through the air as such any longer.
Despite being overweight, his health was pretty good. He was diagnosed in 2005 with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (the walls of his heart got thicker than they were supposed to be, making it harder to pump blood). Pills kept that from being a problem for well over 2 years, though.

 

Eventually, he developed cancer. That was discovered in August 2007, after he'd lost significant weight in a few months' time. It was pretty widespread, so there was little to be done but keep him comfortable. He had to be euthanized on September 12.

The entire time we had Shark, Arzachel also lived with us:

He is gone now, as well (Arzachel's page is here).



There was another cat who lived with us: Nematode.

You can read about her here.

 

Back view of shark being petted.

Bye, Shark...

 

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This page created by Sean Kinlin. Last updated 1/6/08.