My oldest cat died, but not how I expected.

Man, I am really sorry for your loss.

I think a lot of us have had a Patches in our lives at one point or another. Sometimes those tough SOB critters are the warmest, most intelligent animals you'll ever have the pleasure of knowing.

My guy was named Sam. He was a HUGE 20lb brown tabby. If there was one thing he was good at it was communicating. He cracked the nut between human-cat discourse by pantomiming any action he desired. Of course, feeding time (which was all the time) was the most entertaining. He would start off by pawing at his food bowl while looking you in the eye. If that didn't work he'd start making noise. When that didn't get through, he would look up at you then close his eyes and tilt his head like he was recalling some wonderful memory, then start chewing the air. Ah yes, the universal language of hunger.

In the end he had lost one of his rear legs due to dog chase, had constant bladder infections, and cancer to top it all off. He lived with these problems much longer than he should have, completely carefree. I think the loss of his leg bothered us a lot more than it bothered him. We joked that he was like the Terminator, nothing could bring him down. As much I wanted it to be true, we all knew his days were numbered by the time he was 17. Like so many others we tried to do the right thing by him when living became too much of a burden. Didn't stop me from a complete sob-fest. We had a good run together, sounds like you did too.

RIP Patches.