My cat died on Thursday 17 May 2018. He was 15 years old and was hit with a stroke and kidney failure at the same time. It was very sudden. But he was old. Even though he had gone blind in one eye from cataracts, the vet said just two months ago that he had adapted to using the other eye just fine and was very strong and healthy for an older cat.

He’s been with me since I was in primary school. He was a tiny stray kitten who turned up at our house one day. We gave him food and he stuck around, but at first he would dash off into the bushes whenever anyone got to close to him. But after a few days, I managed to catch him. I sat with him for a while, stroking his long, slightly patchy black fur. He started purring, but at the same time was kind of shaking, so I let him go.

After that he got more comfortable with me and my family, and soon enough I was able to pet him and pick him up whenever I wanted. We had an older cat at the time, and my sister was getting a kitten for Christmas, so it was decided that the black kitten would be my cat. “He suits you,” my mom said. We named him Marmite, after his black fur, like we’d named our older cat Marmalade, after his orange fur. I loved both cats but can’t fathom the use of either spread to defile bread.

So we took him in and he started coming inside. We gave him a food bowl – separate from the older cat, who had grown up alone and always hated other cats – and we took him to the vet and he made friends with my sister’s kitten and his fur became less matted and patchy and more luxurious and glossy.

Marmite was never much for being stroked, but he loved having the sides of his face scratched. He would come up to me often and try to knock the book out of my hands, or jump on the keyboard while I was at the computer and demand attention. He had this funny purr that came entirely from his throat, unlike other cats who purr with their whole bodies. It was very vigorous.

People talk about cats being mean and standoffish, but my cat was nothing like that. In his younger years, he was afraid of people he didn’t know, but later he became quite friendly. Whenever someone would get back to our house after going out for a while, he would be waiting for them at the front gate. And he was devoted to me in an almost doglike way. I like to think that he came when he heard his name, but the truth is he probably just came when he heard my voice. Whenever I’d get home – and in later years, visit my parents’ home – he’d be waiting for me, and when I called to him he’d come trotting along, meowing in greeting, to rub against my legs. He never bore any resentment for the months I’d spend away from home at university, or my diminished presence after I moved away from my parents. He was always just happy to see me. He was very talkative, but any meowing would be instantly replaced by purring the moment I picked him up and rubbed his head.

Marmite was also a very well-behaved cat. Unlike our older cat Marmalade, who got particularly vicious when it came time to go the vet, Marmite would calmly let me drop him into the cat box. He wouldn’t like it or the car journey, but I think he trusted me. He also let me give him pills and occasionally turn him upside-down. The only times he would really get upset with me were if I disturbed him while he was cleaning himself, which I quickly learnt never to do. Sometimes he would try to clean me, rubbing his sandpaper tongue over the hairs on my arms. I could never get him to stop kneading at me with his claws when sitting on my lap, so a lot of my older shirts have a pattern of small holes at the bottom.

I’m really going to miss him, a lot. He had a good, full life – a better one than many people get – and was 80+ in cat years when he passed. Our older cat, Marmalade, went in a similar way – kidney failure at age 13, manifesting very suddenly – so I think at the back of my mind I’d been expecting it for a while, but it was still a shock when it happened. My mom said he was sitting near the front gate, waiting for her to come back from her run, covered in dew and miserable when she found him and had my dad take him to the vet. He was old and suffering, and his time had come. I got a phonecall from my dad while I was at work and agreed to end his suffering.

Rest in peace Marmite. I’m so glad you were my cat.