Thank you, Gaby, for bringing this thread.
I also have in memory a few parallel stories.
The last one dates back to 3 summers ago. I was in the garden one Saturday late afternoon, in the process of turning it into an orchard and vegetable garden. When I heard a cat choking on its meow.
It was Pika, an orange tabby cat, skeletal, with charred fur, infested with fleas, with such a strong smell of urine, the same smell as those of the homeless people I used to sit and chat to after college.
Pika was ravenous, but had difficulty chewing, and it was only the next day that I discovered he must have ingested a toxic product that had corroded his mouth, tongue and digestive tract. This may have been due to the 'rat poison' sachets, but I know that people here consider cats to be pests.
As night fell, I made him a cosy little basket in the shed, and after cleaning him and getting rid of a few fleas, and leaving him a bowl of water and food, he seemed to have recovered a little.
Early the next morning, he was meowing at my front door, having managed to slip through the bars of the garden gate.
I decided to put him up in the attic, and Shadow, my cat who at that time would normally chase after cats of all stripes, remained impassive and aloof.
I took the opportunity to clean him up, not to say disinfect him, as he was being eaten alive by fleas, so I gave him an egg and chicken puree, with my formula of vitamin C and glycine mixed with water, which had saved numerous birds and Etruscan shrews.
On Sunday morning, the two of us were together, cleaning him, removing fleas with tweezers and then by hand (there were so many of them), talking to him and stroking him, with Shadow keeping an eye on us from a distance.
After lunch, before going down to the garden, I made sure he was doing well, he seemed to have more voice and energy, I thought that a quiet place to rest, and regain strength and a little time and tenderness he would resume his life as a cat.
At the end of the afternoon, I came up from the garden, and Shadow, who was following me up the stairs to the attic, stopped at the door.
I sat next to Pika, lying in his basket, and he gave a meow to welcome me. At the time, I didn't quite understand, I thought he was getting better, I thought he just wanted to play, but in fact he was dying, all the while giving out murmurs of meows, this being of a cat was trying to get out of his soft basket so that he could hardly put his front paws on my belly to paw me, all the while gently kneading me with his two paws and purring.
And then he just faded away, all of a sudden he was gone,he had waited for me to say goodbye, one part of his poor body in the basket and the other on top of me.
I buried Pika in the garden, next to a lemon tree that has now grown tall.
He was quite a cat, my little Pika.
Meow.
Mathematically and biologically, we live longer than our furry friends, alongside members of our family and human friends. Despite our suffering at their loss, they too, these furry four-legged creatures, deserve us to accompany them and be by their side when they leave this world, not left alone or in the hands of a vet, however sensitive she/he may be.
