I spent most of the night up with him, just letting him sleep; holding him. He had been slipping away for the past couple weeks; the weight loss, appetite, then coordination and all the things that animals do when it is time.
He was named MeowMeow by his 4 grand daughters who loved him. The only cat they knew and although Muggs was a beast to be feared by others of his ilk, he looked at these 4 with a great bit of interest even though as in some sort of alien being much shorter than he was used to. The older he got the more he let them into his life and him into theirs.
My son rescued him from an apartment hallway in Irvington, NJ and he went from there to Astoria and to our house when he (my son) went into the Peace Corps and remained with us for another dozen years, slowly and with a lot of minor incidents, incorporating himself into a household with other cats and then a dog. It took him a while to domesticate but that is true of all of us. He would sit out all night; at peace on a mattress on the front porch bench, wanting nothing, and tail up when we appeared.
He is resting under a cedar tree in our backyard with his food bowl and some high end food for his journey to the cat heaven. He gave us the great gift of unconditional love that animals bestow on humans and for that we are thankful. What with a lifetime of vet bills and cat food we figure he was a $5000 cat and I have to tell you, in heart to heart honesty, when I was holding him this morning while he took his last breath, paw to my face, that I would give it a million times over if he would come back.