Today was a sad day for me. We had to euthanize our cat, Rorschach, who was 20 years old. Shack was always the shy, calm cat among our set of as many as three cats. While the others were terrorizing something or other, Shack, or Fuzzy as we also called her, was calmly watching what was happening. In her later years, she took to sunning herself and enjoying being the only cat in the family after the others had died and not yet been replaced. But time took its toll, and her kidneys were quickly failing, along with her high blood pressure and overactive Thyroid. It's amazing what you will do to keep a pet going. We gave her daily medication, hydration ( a really not-fun process), and the only food she would still eat, pureed chicken. We decided that we could no longer sustain her. For the last few weeks, her tongue hung out of her mouth all the time, and she was always thirsty and needed to pee. Yet she enjoyed spending time on the deck, sunning herself, and she always cuddled up next to me at night, and often slept perched on my chest as long as I would let her. But yet we did a lot for her for these last few years. We had to carefully plan our vacations so she could receive her every other day, and then daily, treatments. Why? It is hard to describe the pleasure I felt from her curling up on my lap and purring, or giving me a rub on the chin. Shack, rest in peace.