Random facts about Luigi, in no particular order, and not (yet) edited for grammar:

• We “adopted” Luigi in March 2009, when she was about a year old.
• Luigi was never much of a mouser, but she loved chasing after bugs outside our living room picture window on summer nights. You could always tell she was doing it when you heard her leaping up against the glass.
• Luigi wasn’t big on chasing after toys, but when she was younger, we had a cheap laser pointer that would whip her into a frenzy. We didn’t have one for most of her later years, but like many cats, she would also chase around after those pull tab rings that come with gallon jugs of milk.
• Luigi truly was the ultimate lap cat, though she liked shoulders even better. The best way to pick her up was to toss her over your shoulder. Later in life, she liked to crawl up onto my chest while I lay on the sofa. Usually, she would get in the way of my laptop screen, and I would have to encourage her to move. She would end up on my lap, or nestled on my left arm against the back of the sofa, and would stay that way until I had to move my arm.
• Luigi was very vocal. You could always tell she was coming when you heard her meowing. When she settled on your lap, she would meow every time you pet her, until she got tired of it. Then, as she started to relax and settle in, she would start to purr and the meows would change to shorter grunts. When she was really super relaxed, and you pet her, she would open her mouth and make kind of a “silent” meow.
• Luigi used to nip at you if you pet her too much. When she was a kitten, she would nip to try to get attention. Fortunately, she grew out of that habit before too long.
• Unlike her sister, Luigi was never much of a dairy/milk fiend. However, when she got older, she became really annoying when I was trying to eat breakfast. She would sit on the table and try to get a lick of whatever I was eating. Picking her up and putting her on the ground was only a temporary fix.
• Luigi was one of those cats who would scratch the furniture in spite of all of the cat-specific scratch pads around the house. The exception was the “pet friendly” upholstery in the La-Z-Boy furniture we bought for the basement. It was kind of a miracle– she completely ignored it. Instead, she scratched at the crappy carpet on the basement stairs. Not really a great loss there. Occasionally, she would come down and sit on my lap as I sat on the sofa working. When she was tired of that, she would head back upstairs, always stopping to scratch at that crappy carpet on the way.
• Luigi was not an outdoor cat, but she loved going outside. She would wait for an opportunity to dart out when someone opened the door. Sometimes we’d forget about her until she showed back up on the porch several hours later. If it was raining, she would slink off along the top of the wall flanking our basement walk-out steps, where it was really hard to retrieve her. Later in life, she surprised us by taking off after a rabbit. We didn’t think she had it in her, but we managed to catch her.
• Luigi was very friendly and social, but unlike her sister, not all that affectionate. But she was always the first to greet guests when they came in, while her sister often ran to hide.
• Luigi used to hang out in my son Michael’s room a lot, probably because it is the warmest room in the house during the winter. She rarely came into the master bedroom, with the exception of one several-week stretch where she slept in our bed every night. She liked to sleep up near the head of the bed, much to my initial chagrin. However, after a while of this, I got used to it and looked forward to her showing up a few minutes after I retired for the night. This didn’t last– I think I went on a business trip at one point, she relocated back to Michael’s room (or the living room), and that was the end of that.
• Another of Luigi’s loves was closets. One way to find her was to open the foyer closet, because she’d be sure to come running. Occasionally, we’d either forget about her (or she’d sneak in without us knowing) and she would get stuck in the closet, sometimes for several hours, until someone heard the disembodied meows and figured out where they were coming from.
• Luigi had a few favorite places to curl up. Her signature spot was inside the living room armoire behind the 32″ flat screen TV. Many times, she would startle us by jumping out from there while we were watching TV.
• My silly nickname for Luigi was “Luijer”, which is an amalgamation of “Luigi” and “Peejer”, a word that my son Andrew made up when he was 6 or 7.
• We lost Luigi on November 14, 2024. She was 16. She was a big part of our family, and we will miss her, but I think she lived a good life with us. We buried her out in back of the deck, which was one of the places she enjoyed exploring while she was outside.