You are very welcome. I also take support from the stories that people have shared here and I am happy that it helps others in some way.

It is important to me that this site stays operational even just for this one page in which so much has been told and shared.

I’d like to do more in fact and open up the site to allow people to share more of their animal companion experiences but I am aware of the limitations in my web designer capabilities and so have asked for some help in that department.

Hopefully my friend will help me prepare a new Four Legged Friends website that is easier to navigate and also offers visitors more options to talk about their pets – and share both happy and sad stories and pictures of their animal companions past and present too.

So sorry to hear of your loss of Claus. I lost my own boxer Skye just before Christmas and her companion, a large Presa Canario, became very depressed. For the first time in his life he was put on medication for various hip and joint problems and he had no pleasure in life at all. He is only now coming back to himself. I am sure that his sadness and medical problems were mostly brought about by missing his friend. There is no doubt in my mind at all that dogs and cats grieve as much as we do.

I hope you find a rescue bouvie and if you do he or she will be lucky indeed to be welcomed into such a loving family. Best wishes on your hunt for him and again, condolences on the loss of Claus.

Thank you for taking the time to write about Cailin. I know how hurt you must feel and I hope getting it down was therapeutic for you in some way. I am going to open a little memory gallery here one of these days and you might want to come back and include a picture of Cailin when I do?

It is so, so hard to lose our animal companions but the pain is small payment for the many years of joy and love they give us. I imagine you may not be ready for quite a while but one day, sometime in the future, I hope that another kitten will climb Cailin’s tree.

I really wanted to have a female cat, so the shelter manager took me to another litter and picked out this little ball of multi coloured fluff. She told me that this was definitely a female cat as this was a so called tortoiseshell cat and cats of this colouring were usually all female. I held this little fluffy thing and she looked at me with her blue eyes and I fell in love instantly. That was my cat!! We called her Cailin, which is the Irish word for ‘Girl’ and took her home. She was a real character and she was always there. She helped me settle into my new life, she was there when we got married, she was there when we had our three children, when we moved house- she was always around.

She had her own way of communicating with us. She was very vocal and had different sounds for different moods. And we loved her dearly. For 19 years she was with us. She had a healthy life, loved being outdoors (although at Night I kept her in). She was a good hunter (I had to put a bell on her collar as she was a very good bird catcher) and always very playful. She loved cheese and cream, only ate certain cat food brands (very choosy), loved freshly cooked chicken and begged at the dinner table like a dog.

When she was about 14 years old she needed daily tablets for Hyperthyroidism and for failing kidneys as well. I had her checked regularly and she was also vaccinated religiously. Although she slept a lot more she was still quite agile at times and as she got older she became more and more attached to us. She liked being near us, liked being cuddled. Hated it when we were away from home and the neighbour looked after her. And I never stopped worrying when we were away.

Then last weekend she stopped eating and as she was already terribly thin I got very worried. She vomited a couple of times and became lethargic. And when she refused to eat sausage from the fridge I knew for sure that something was wrong. She never refused chicken or sausage, even when she didn’t like the cat food. Food seemed to turn her. I phoned a friend, who is a vet and he suspected acute renal failure- the most common disease in older cats. I had to bring her in for blood tests and when I put her into the cat transport box, she didn’t even complain. Not a good sign. The vet took blood and put in a catheter. She was dehydrated and needed fluids urgently. He gave her some antibiotics and put her on a drip. The bloods were not bad, the kidneys still functioning well. So he suspected a stomach bug or something like that. He knew that I didn’t want to leave her so he said I could take her home and keep her on the drip. But as soon as she was in the car she cried terribly and had something like a seizure.

The vet suspected a reaction to the antibiotic and asked me to wait for 15-20 minutes. Then he checked her again and told me I could go now. As soon as I arrived home I realised that she had pulled out the IV and even when I re-attached it it wouldn’t drip. He told me to bring her back immediately as she really needed the fluids. I took her back and when I arrived she was miserable. I had to leave her with him and it was the hardest thing. I had promised her that would be with her all the way, that I wouldn’t leave her- and now I left her. But what could I do??? In the afternoon he took her home to his house as she was still on the drip and then told me he would bring her home. She was still not eating and when he arrived she had deteriorated. She cried miserably and looked awful. I asked him to be honest with me- and he said he didn’t think it was fair to carry on, that she was obviously suffering at this stage. I told him that we did not want that and that he should end it now for her and for us.

He put her into my arms and she was soaking wet. The fluids that went into her vain obviously just came out again. She peed all over me but I didn’t care. I talked to her, stroked her, told her she would be ok now. She was obviously in pain and she bit me in the finger. Something she hadn’t done for years. She only ever bit when she was uncomfortable or hurting. The vet administered the barbiturate into the catheter and it took merely a minute before her heart stopped beating. We were heartbroken and cried. We laid her on a blanket on the table and stroked her and kissed her and cried. Then we wrapped her up and put her back into the box that I had cleaned first.

The children had never known life without Cailin and especially my oldest daughter had a very strong bond with our cat and she was so upset. Yesterday we took Cailin to a pet crematorium. Her ashes will be put into a small urn that had carried a small part of my dad’s ashes. My dad passed away three years ago and because he had loved Ireland so much, we brought back a small part of his ashes and scattered them in Donegal. I had kept that small urn for Cailin. We can pick up the ashes tonight. Then we will hold on to them for some time until our garden- her garden, has been re-landscaped.

We will hopefully have a small tree planted for her and maybe we will bury the ashes underneath it or scatter them around the tree. But for now we will hold on to them and place them beside her photograph. A couple of years ago we had a portrait done of Cailin by a fantastic English artist called Sally Logue. She had captured our little darling so well and now we are so glad that we have this portrait of her hanging on our living room wall where we can see it as soon as we walk in. We miss her terribly and she can never be replaced. She was the most beautiful cat ever- four coloured, semi-longhaired and sophisticated. And she left a huge void in our lives. I still expect her to walk into a room, complain to me, beg for treats, wait at the door. It’s hard!! And it will be for a very long time to come! I am glad about one thing though- every Night, when I put her to bed I told her how much I love her! And I know she is reunited with my dad up there in heaven and is happy. He was very fond of her too!