Goodbye, sweet kitten
I just said good-bye to one my best friends' cats last Thursday. Rushed down after my PT and arrived minutes before the injections started. Pasqual wasn't mine, but he was still family, and loved demanding my attention when I was over. He'd had diabetes for years, but this spring started going downhill hard. He was about 18, originally a barn cat when she had a boarding stable. She took the two cats with her when she sold the place, and they became house cats. He was the last one.
My friend still has two, Catalina, a mutt Himalayan (who adores me, which makes her husband jealous!), and Solita, a cat that someone must have dumped in the desert nearby. My friend's husband slowly won her trust over a year, then this past winter started allowing her in "just at night, because it's cold out." Solita's now a housecat again. (And I avoid interacting with her; the hubby would get really bent if she ditched him for me the way Catalina does!)
I've currently got three at home, all offspring from the feral colony I used to have at my old house.