My cat died a week ago. I wrote in Facebook:

My cat Sura died today. He didn’t come home last night and I found him unmoving in a neighbour’s back garden early this morning. The vet tried to stabilise his condition with oxygen and fluid but he died of internal failure. He would have been 16 years old in December. I’m glad I had some time to comfort him a bit and say goodbye.

Sometimes he was inconvenient and I didn’t pay enough attention to him; but he was part of my family and my life. It took me a while to feel a sense of loss but I do now. ‘Just a cat’ maybe but a definite personality and I had a spiritual connection with him. My neighbour, Jim, said that he was definitely the ‘top cat’ in the area; he ate out sometimes when my other neighbour Afshan fed him chicken scraps.

His body will be cremated and the ashes returned to me. I checked at the vet’s and was told that I would be notified within the next week.