Going Quietly…

The ‘Surrey Puma’ has gone on to the great big hunting grounds in the sky. Our cat Sooty had to be put down recently after he developed an incurable illness. He was getting old and we had noticed over the last few months some signs that something was not quite right. He had started to become a lot more vocal and seemed to be losing some of his senses – running into a room and right past you to go meowing for you in the next. Also he occasionally had difficulty jumping. Sometimes he would just sit there and stare at the floor. Anyway it ended up that we found him one morning wobbling around, his back legs barely functioning, hiding in quite dark area for a while before going outside in the cold and sitting staring at the ground.

So we took him into the vets and they kept him in overnight with a drip in him to warm him up (he was dangerously cold). They could not say for sure what had happened but it was likely that is was a problem with his brain that caused stroke-like symptoms. To ease his suffering we asked the vet to put him down and so as not to be cowards Sue insisted we be there to stroke his head and hold his paw. I must confess I howled the place down.

We still think we glimpse him occasionally out of the corner of an eye, a dark shape in the room or a shadow of movement and we hear noises that sound like him padding through the house. He was such a big part of our lives for a long time, even if it was entirely on his own slightly psychopathic terms.