Mason Felix Emerson 2007 - December 12, 2018

Mason came into our family in February of 2008. He came from the Humane Society shelter. Kind of hard to see a black cat on a black chair, eh?


Mason and Colt on the first night we got them


Mason in a pose similar to the one Ninja Marchbanks made that prompted Eli to say, "Get your fur-shedding butt out of my sink!"


is it possible that this is a coded message in some kind of cat semaphore?


Mason in the pic that got him into the Lolcat calendar (caption: Don't look at me. I is just a sock.)


Mason was picked from the descriptions on the Humane Society web site on the basis of his personality. He was described as being doglike, and it said that he would follow you from room to room. Yup, they got that right. One of the possible meanings of his middle name, "Felix" is "happy", and he was a happy cat. Mason was probably the most laid-back kitty we've had. I don't recall him ever hissing or growling (something that happens reasonably frequently with certain other cats in the house). Even when our high-energy dogs got obnoxious and ran over him, he'd just scramble out of their way. He was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism in 2017, and we had to start giving him two little pills every day. He was extremely easy to pill; just get him to open his mouth, toss it in, and he'd go right back to what he was doing (ususally eating).

Mason was certainly a handsome cat, but he suffered from the same problem as all black pets: hard to capture in photographs, so we don't have as many solo pictures of him. Two features that set him apart from other cats that we've had: he had so much pigment that even his whiskers were black when he was young. They gradually went white from the tips down, but even at 11 years old, he still had black roots . The other feature: those massive teeth. Sometimes it shows in photos that his fangs extended below his upper lip. Sabertooth kitty?

^Here's a picture of Mason comforting Bruno on Bruno's last day with us. Miles paid it back; instead of being his usual obnoxious self around the cats, Miles let Mason enjoy some lap time for TV watching...
...and he even let Mason sleep on the human bed for his last night with us in the traditional cuddle cat position that had been occupied by Martha, Mandy, Missy, Lulu, and Tomás through the years.

Good-bye, Mason. You were all you were advertised to be and more.

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