Lulu Monster
After the loss of my best kitty bud of 18 years, The Mooks, I thought I’d never be the same. Then I met an SPCA rescue named Emerald. Pretty green eyes, I get the name, but it didn’t sit right. That turned into EmeLou, which evolved into Lulu, which is totally appropriate. Lulu Monster evolved from that, as a joke, as she’s the sweetest girl around.
Febuary 7th, 2026
Back in April of 2018 after about a month of being heartbroken because of losing my Dad and the best cat on the planet “The Mooks” in the span of a week, I ran across a listing for a kitty on the SPCA web site. She had been at a Petco around the corner from my home for a month. She was a cutie. Why had she been there a month I wondered. I drove up to check her out the next morning. She looked great through the window. Nobody was around to help me, so I went through the door to the back side of the cage, opened it up and this was one friendly cat.
I took her home that day. We danced and sniffed around for a month and became best buds. Now besting The Mooks is entirely out of the question, so I had no illusions. This sweet girl came with papers that listed her name as Emerald. OK beautiful green eyes, I get it. Not going to work here. Together we settled on EmeLou. It worked. Over time this became Lulu which is dead on who this cat is.
Lulu knows what’s up. We have a wakeup routine, a breakfast routine, a lunch routine and so on. She’s very dependable. Rarely can I slip in the front door without her being there.
Now there’s a kink in all of this. Right as the weather changes in the Spring, I’ve noticed enough change in her personality that I’ve noted it on the calendar to watch for it. Last year, this kicked in as expected. The thing is, it got weirder than usual. She didn’t want to eat and really started dropping weight on the quick.
I shopped at every store I could find to get her a new food that she liked. I started keeping spreadsheets on the food that she liked or didn’t. I used stars, comments, photos and whatever I could do to get her food that she would eat. She still lost weight.
I took her to the clinic that I’ve trusted with my last three long lived kitties and figured out what’s up. She was diagnosed with Chronic Kidney Disease, which apparently a third of cats of eleven years old will have. This sweet girl went from 8.5 pounds to 5.5. Her boney tinyness was heartbreaking. I just weighed her in the last minute. She’s a solid six pounds. This is where she’s been since her months-long recovery to maintain what weight she can.
During all of this, she switched up entirely. She lived under the microwave stand in the kitchen. All the normal stuff was out the window. No morning kisses, no meeting at the door. We were both pretty miserable. I had lost a good amount of my closest friends during LuluKitty’s watch. It’s hard when your best friend, who helps you through the tough times, is the one you worry about and can’t comfort you. It’s tougher when she feels so bad that she doesn’t want to be comforted.
Finally… She gained that half a pound. She started venturing out like a new kitty in a new, strange place. Her prescription food isn’t cheap. A few months in, her food was suddenly unavailable, so I keep a case in reserve to never go through that panic again.
Slowly, she’s become her old self again. We do our old routines that I had taken for granted. When I get out of the shower in the morning, she’s waiting, jumps on the bed and talks her funny shit as I get dressed. Before I leave for the day, we always sit and have a little chat. I’m lucky enough to work seriously close to the house. I come home for lunch and eat a good meal and have a good hang with Lulu.
After losing both of my parents and a healthy amount of my closest friends over the last handful of years, I’m pretty tuned into my sweet Lulu girl. I’m amazed at myself at how much this tiny little kitty means, at how much joy I have that she is merely alive. It’s a weird thing. I am so, so grateful that I have any amount of time with this sweet bud. At the same time, I see her and can’t help but be reminded how fragile life is and know that someday we will part.
I was convinced that after The Mooks, that I would never have such a good bud again, but I was wrong. The way I look at it, is that I’ve been lucky enough to have the right friend at the right time. I notice that while I’m relaying this, that I keep using the word “routine.” I honestly believe that Lulu and I are more conscious and locked into our routine than we were before. I think it means more to both of us.
Something that has always set her apart from past kitties, is her immense chill. It’s a tad different here lately, but her demeanor has generally been when I come home “I’m cool, I’ll just chill here on this table until you change clothes and get relaxed. I’ll eat when you grab a minute.” These days she’ll follow me around and visit, then we’ll get her a bit of food. I can’t recall her ever being bitchy.
I guess that I could have just put a caption under this photo, that Lulu is my bestest Bud. I suppose that I needed to get this out there, out of my system. I’m a lucky guy. I have a great, silly, fun, sweet kitty purring right by my side.
