One Cool Cat

Cuddles passed away Tuesday morning. I've been waiting for enough composure to write his obituary, I'm not there yet but maybe this will help me get there.
Cuddles came to me in 1993. By then he was already 4 or 5 years old according to the vet, so I know very little about his origins. I had just moved into an appartment complex, newly wedded to my first husband, and Cuddles just marched up the stairs one fair evening in July and knocked. He stood on his hind paws and scratched at the door, then sat and waited. At first the noise befuddled me and it was a week before I caught him doing it. At the time, my now ex had a cat, Smokey, who was as mean and self-centered as he was, and it didn't seem feasible to add another cat, so I hung out with Cuddles outside. I went door to door asking people who he belonged to. I found out from the complex manager that the previous tenants had moved to another end of the complex, and so I found them, but they didn't know him either (Cuddles certainly had no love lost for them). Cuddles was adamant our place was his.
Then one day coming back from work, I found Cuddles on our couch inside. He had figured out how to climb onto the roof and on down to the balcony and through Smokey's cat door. He was home, he knew it. Smokey was furious but seemed defeated. So he became my cat and I became his person.
I called him Cuddles at the very beginning because he was always hungry for a lap or a pet, and as soon as he got it, he purred like a motorboat. Since I had no intention of keeping him, the choice of a name seemed meaningless. He had a very high-pitched meow like a female cat, and having looked around, I had concluded he was a female. When he first showed up, he was a small and skinny cat, and within a couple weeks, he had developed a significant gut, which, compounded with my misguided gender identification, made me think he was pregnant. It was when I took him to be spayed that I found out he was a neutered male. Needless to say that the vet was amused by the fact that I was a second-year senior majoring in biology. Cuddles had merely failed to thrive, having apparently spent his first few years on the street, but the condition is reversible in cats and he caught up to his full height and weight in no time. Though "Cuddles" is a neuter word in English, people readily assumed he was a she because of it, but every attempt to rename him from Cuddles after those first two weeks failed, and so I tried to masculinize his name with the title of Sir Cuddles. Still, for 13 years, I fully felt the weight of my mistake when I regularly had to stand outside at night and call him in, "Cuddles, Cud-dles", through one student neighborhood after another.
Cuddles and I went through 5 moves together, 3 in California, one cross country and one here in North Carolina. Those moves belie the changes I went through in the 13 years we had together, grad school, work, homeowner, married, divorced, married, mother. He grew, became more and more of a homebody. He very slowly shed his penchant for trouncing every cat in the neighborhood, especially after he lost his left eye in 1995 during a particularly gruesome encounter. But his natural ability to be with people only blossomed. He charmed everyone easily, knowing when to press hard with a cat-lover, when to be coy with shy people. He never thought of biting or clawing a human being the way he went after those of his own species. When his crate would come out for a dreaded vet visit, I could capture him by the tail from under the bed and all he would do is yowl his discontent. That was his worst. Once there, he was his best self again, purring so loud as to drown out the sound of his heartbeat on the steth. Everyone who has known him has stories about him, if you do then don't hesitate to add them on here in the comments.
I am sorely going to miss the blissful feeling of lying on the couch or on the bed with him on my chest, purring away with his front paws hugging my neck and his head tucked under my chin. I will miss his voice and the numerous different "words" he used, especially that pidgeony purr-meow rrrrow he used when he enjoyed his neck massage. I will miss the pitter-patter of his little feet when he followed along on walks with Emmett. I will miss his handsome profile in front of the house, his rolling in a sunny spot, which gave him that sunshiney warm bread-loaf smell he had.
On Sunday he didn't budge from his bed. Since it was a cold and rainy day, it didn't seem abnormal. When he didn't come for dinner I became alarmed. At the vet on Monday, they found nothing abnormal but for a little puncture wound which might have been infected, which might have caused dementia because of his advanced age. Monday night I had to spoon feed him his special food with antibiotics. But Tuesday morning he had passed, he was still warm when I found him. He is being cremated.