stanley

This page is dedicated to Stanley, my beloved.

Stanley was adopted by my family in May of 2012. He lived happy and well-loved until June of 2025.

Here, I have posted images and fun things about him :) This page acts as a memorial to him. So please, do enjoy and stay a while.

Remember to pet him, okay?

This is the story of how Stanley appeared in my life and changed the course of time.

Once upon a time, in May of 2012, my sister and my father went to the local pet store to pick up dog food or something.

There, they saw him.

Stanley was laying on a cat tree in the kitty room, with three or four kittens using him as a jungle gym. He looked bored and a little sad, and my family knew we had to have him.

He was apparently left at the store because his old owner couldn't take care of him anymore, and he was only a year or so old. Poor baby. So we adopted him, but the story doesn't end there. Oh, no, the story is only beginning.

My dad brings Stanley home, and I meet him for the first time. He's a bit wide-eyed and skittish, being young and in a new and unfamiliar place, but we all fall in love with him immediately. Then, my parents go out for the night, leaving me, my sister, and my sister's friend, and Stanley.

It's getting a bit late. The sun is just beginning to set, so it's probably around 8 pm, and we have the windows in the kitchen and living room open, because it's warm out. And Stanley is laying on the windowsill, enjoying his new home. And our windows have screens, of course, which are secured by metal clips.

Well, they are MEANT to be secured by metal clips.

As it turns out, my mother had forgotten to push in the clips after taking down Christmas lights however long prior.

And as I am sitting in my room, and my sister and her friend are chatting in hers, I hear a loud metal CRASH.

I jump from whatever I was doing, run out into the kitchen, and watch as Stanley's tail flicks out through the opening of the window, into the night.

My sister and I FLIP OUT. She starts calling our parents to come home immediately, and I run outside to look for him. I see him on top of the neighbor's shed, but he darts away before I can get to him. I later see him on the wood fence separating our yard from our other neighbor's, and he leaps down onto the other side, disappearing. We're calling for him, crying, as our parents get home to help. The neighbors are out, too, but there's no further sign of him by dark.

At this point, we have mostly given up on ever seeing him again. It was his first day home, and not even 12 hours had passed before he was gone. Heartbroken, I crawl into bed.

And then my mom bursts into my room, shouting, We Found Him, We Found Him!

I, having already gone through the five stages of grief, appropriately replied, wait, What?

Our neighbor across the street had discovered Stanley's singular weakness: yummy meal. She left out a bowl of cat food in her driveway, and he was chowing down within an hour.

And so, that is the story of how we lost Stanley the very first day we got him, but he came back because he loved us :)

(food. he loved Food.)

Stanley, being the pinnacle of intelligence and grace, got himself into a lot of shenanigans in his life here with us.

Ever since Stanley got his first taste of the outdoors, he would try to escape out of any door left open too long. He succeeded on many occasions, but once he'd gotten older he knew that whatever is out there wouldn't love him (or feed him) like we had been here.

At one point, we got Stanley a harness and leash to try to get him to exercise a bit. We couldn't take him outside, because he never had any flea or tick protection, but we thought he might walk around the house. Instead, he lied on the ground like a slug while I drug him around like a mop.

Our house has a glass sliding door. Once, a young Stanley saw a critter through the glass from across the room. He got so excited that he ran, full-speed, face-first into the door.

Another thing about Stanley is that he always LOVED to sit in cardboard boxes. He would try to fit in any sized box, and WOULD bust it open with his fat ass if necessary. However, on one specific occasion, he tried to get into an empty box of Coca-Cola. He stuck his head into the open end, got to his shoulders, and got stuck. He then panicked and backed up, but the box moved with him, causing him to jump onto his back legs, standing, then lose his balance and fall backwards onto his back. On the way down, he twisted himself upright, knocking the box off his head, leaving him looking around in confusion as to what could have possibly assailed him.

As we know, Stanley loved meal. Stanley hadn't ever taken human food (although he was sometimes given a little teeny bit of chicken as a treat), but he did like to sniff it just to see what we were having. Once, while I was taking a class on Zoom, Stanley sniffed my ham sandwich so aggressively that I thought he WAS going to steal it. I let him have the littlest piece I could tear from it, just to calm him down.

Stanley also would get canned food sometimes. Even after months without it, he still always came running when he heard the sound of the lid cracking open. He liked to lick the spoon, too.

Once I was sitting at the kitchen table with my dad when Stanley jumped out of his litter box, barreled down the stairs, and scooted his butt across the floor, leaving a big smear. I had to chase him around the house and then wipe his poopy butt like he was a baby. He was not having fun and he was definitely scared something was trying to hurt him, but it was very funny.

When we got a puppy, Stanley had taken to sleeping in her kennel, much to her frustration. I don't know why he liked it so much, but he would just go in there and nap for hours whenever he felt like it. One time my mom put the puppy away for bed and couldn't figure out why she kept whining. She went in the check on her only to find the puppy pressed up against the door staring sadly at Stanley's sleeping form, which was taking up her entire bed. Luckily, this meant we finally found a travel kennel option that he didn't mind much, because there was lots of space for him to lounge and he could see all over around him :)

Stanley was not an animal who normally liked to play. The only toys he had ever shown interest in are ones which involve a human wiggling something near him (such as a feather on a stick, a hand under a blanket, or a piece of tissue paper). However, he eventually discovered the pencil. The pencil is an unsharpened Staples HB #2 that I'd probably had for over a decade. For whatever reason, after clipping Stanley's nails, I decided to try to use the pencil to play with him. He tried to grab it out of my hand, chased it when I threw it down the stairs, and even played with it by himself to the point that he put two big bite marks in it and threw it at the dog.

Another of Stanley's favorite places to be was on my pillows. He would go there to nap whether it was occupied or not, and he liked if I use him as a pillow, too. This also gave him the perfect vantage point to put his claws in my hair or kick me in the shoulder so he could bug me for breakfast at 5:00 am. He was always soooo cute when he was curled up on the pillows and purring so sweetly :) He would even stay there when I went to sleep.

Probably his favorite place of all, once he was very elderly, was to lie on a blanket across my belly and/or legs. He would always purr so very warmly and sleep so very soundly. Eventually, he would get too warm and tire of this spot, so he would go to lie on the couch or the floor. My grandparents would also have little folding camp tables to use as footrests, but he liked that they cradled him so perfectly without getting hot. He would usually alternate between these three or four spots throughout the day.

Stanley was certainly a male orange cat.

by Smiley

by Nick

by Octo

by Jasper

by Jay

"he's like if a loaf of bread was an animal or if like a cat was a grandpa or if my best friend was a baby."
- Orion

"Stanley has the most soulful eyes I've ever seen on a cat. He looks like a businessman who is happy at his job but doesn't actually know what it is."
- Jay

"i love when stanley sit like a person"
"what an incredible animal."
- Smiley

"he chills in a sloppy style and ima big fan of that."
- Mikey

"i love stanley so much he's everything to me"
- Jasper

"stanley [...] he is a beautiful cat"
- Zagreo

"stanley is my favorite and the only celebrity"
- Rain

"Stanley looks like a man who was so so deeply sad and pitiful got cursed to be a cat forever approximately 200 years ago and he never got less sad"
- Hollis

"Stanley is so cute it’s distracted me from commenting on the [REDACTED]"
- Octo

"Fantastic cat. Certainly one of the cats of all time"
- Enrique

"I love Stanley <3"
- sadgrl

"I love your Stanley page so much, he has such a sweet round face"
"Every time his page is updated it's like laying in the grass under the sun. Orange Stanley-shaped furry sun... baby boy"
"Neocities wheezes scrolling past the wall of Stanley photos at the top and it's beautiful. Crumbling under the weight of his majesty"
- solradguy

"the Stanley page is currently my favourite page on the internet"
- capstasher

"Stanley!!!!"
- satyrwoud

"stanley my beloved <- said in a tone that indicates that your cat is a local celebrity now"
- spiders

"I eagerly look forward to his inevitable ascension."
- thel3tterm

"I heard about Stanley. Came to see for myself. There was so much Stanley my browser froze trying to load it all. Bravo and thanks, to both you and Stanley."
- patentghost

"weird little face <- said with nothing but love"
- mios-axe

"Stanley brought much joy to the world, through a wide variety of means. Lover of pencils, menace to hair, he is remembered dearly. He is bringing joy to another world now"
- Jay

"I loved seeing him on vc and especially loved pretending our pets were friends FaceTiming" →
- Octo

"Cats are the sweetest little things on earth and it always hurts to see them go. Stanley seemed like a lovely lad ... may he rest."
- unexplainedsightingsofcowboys

"Stanley was so dearly loved and will be missed. thank you for celebrating him so unabashedly and sharing his glory with us. it's always been a joy to hear of his shenanigans and attempt to load the gallery. please know his rotund orange glow will forever warm our hearts. <3"
- patentghost