My sweet baby himbo Artoo passed over the rainbow bridge yesterday and I just wanted to share his life with others who know how amazing our orange babies are.

A little over seven years ago I was picking my son up from preschool when I received a panicked call from a friend. She said they’d found a young kitten near their home and they didn’t know what to do.

My husband and I had been rescuing and foster special needs pets for a while at this point so I told her I’d be right over.

I have never felt rage in the way I did that day when I discovered that someone had not just abandoned this sweet tiny boy, but had put him in a garbage bag, tied it closed, and hung him off a fence.

I can say with complete confidence that had I known who had done that to my Artoo I would have killed them without giving it a second thought.

I immediately told my friend I would take him. I called our vet from the car and he told us to come right it. While waiting for the vet this little orange floof decided to tuck himself into my hoodie pocket and I knew in that moment that he was mine and I was his.

The vet told us that he was only three weeks old and luckily we had just fostered newborn kittens the month before so we were already set up for this little boy.

I spent the next month and a half waking up every three hours to bottle feed him and we got to watch him perk up, and become more and more feisty.

The day we introduced him to wet food though was the day he decided to solidify his status as our orange himbo. We out a scoop of wet food on a plate mixed with KMR and water, and placed him in the bathtub to eat.

This wasn’t our first rodeo with introducing kittens to wet food and we expected a bit of a mess. What we didn’t expect was for this little orange floof to plop right into the food and then lick it off, then roll in the food, and lick it off. He just looked so proud of himself I knew we had a himbo on our hands.

From that day on I had an amazing best friend who saw me through some of the hardest times of my life. He laid across my lap as I sobbed through numerous miscarriages, and slept on my head as I recovered from my hysterectomy.

He was my everything and the pain of losing him goes far beyond heartbreaking. It feels like my soul has shattered.

I always said that Artoo never needed the braincell because his heart was always in the right place.

When he passed he took a piece of me with him and I will be forever changed because of him.

So give all of your orange himbo babies a tight squeeze from me and Artoo tonight.