Pretty Boy

Some nasty neighbors around the corner moved away and left a cat behind to fend for himself 4 years ago. Another neighbor, while walking her dog past the house, would often hear this cat screaming—a loud lonely heartbreaking whine. She knew we had recently lost our cat so she asked us if we might give this abandoned one a home. That afternoon we brought him home, starving and full of fleas. After bathing and feeding him, we set about naming him since nobody knew his name. We thought he was 3-4 years old, quite beautiful, mostly white with a bit of brown on his ears, back and tail. And the deepest ocean blue eyes I’ve ever seen. We called him Pretty Boy.
The vet told us he was actually very old, 13-15, and had a heart murmur. Very affectionate, we could hardly sit down without him climbing into our laps.

A couple weeks ago, his appetite and grooming waned and his whining for attention almost stopped altogether. Last week we had to make the very difficult decision that we sometimes have to do, after finding out he had several problems, like his kidneys were shot. We reluctantly agreed that we didn’t want him to suffer through a slow lingering end. He was 19 years old. It was a very hard day…