Quendë started hanging around my house in late summer of 2011. He ate at the stray feeder in the garage, but because he was neutered and in good condition, I assumed he had a home in the neighborhood and was just dropping by to mooch. I called him "Talker" because of his habit of meowing loudly and frequently.

As time went on, Talker spent more and more time at my house, and I started to wonder whether he really did have a home. When the weather got cold he began camping in the garage at night, often yowling at my kitchen door at uncomfortable hours. (Did I mention that he was LOUD?) In the end it became clear that if he had once had a home, he was no longer living there, and after numerous invasion efforts on his part I finally let him come in and join the household.

I gave him the formal name Quendë, which is just a translation of Talker. It was extremely apt, as he continued his habit of loud and frequent vocalizing. I wondered at first whether he was deaf, as deaf cats often meow loudly, but as far as I could determine his hearing was fine. He was just a loudmouth.

Quendë also had a few personality quirks. He was not very sociable, generally just not wanting to be bothered with human attention, though he could occasionally be somewhat affectionate, purring and licking my hand when I petted him. (Or he might just yell and bite me. Quendë liked to keep me guessing.) He was very belligerent and demanding when he wanted something, and got a bit aggressive when thwarted. I suspect that this, plus the amount of noise he produced, might have gotten him kicked out of his former home.

He behaved well with other cats, though (a necessity in my household), and was really a decent fellow, if a bit unrefined in his manners. He settled into the family quite comfortably, and seemed perfectly content to remain here.

During the late summer of 2014 Quendë started losing weight, and testing showed that his kidneys were failing. This was a surprise, as he hadn't appeared to be an elderly cat, and kidney failure is usually a geriatric condition. However, he might have been significantly older than I thought (it's not possible to reliably judge the age of an adult cat whose history is unknown), or he might have had some pre-existing kidney weakness which caused them to fail earlier than usual. He received the normal supportive care, subcutaneous fluids and medication, but by January of 2015 he had reached the end of the road, and on Jan. 19th I had him put to sleep. The house was sadly quiet without him.