It is so sad to see those that we love, leave us.

"Dasher", my long-haired, and long-time friend, now over 17, who happens to be of the feline persuation, has been going downhill, healthwise, for months.

You know how really old cats sometimes get all bony and arthritic? She didn't show this until a few months ago, but this has progressed quite rapidly.

Yesterday, she developed a runny eye and nose. Now, all night, she has been gasping for breath, a kind of half-cough and half-choking sound which tells us her time is near.

She's always been a "loner" cat. She's not taken kindly to strangers, preferring to disappear rather than be seen, when anyone outside the family is over. (I think it's because she was near-feral when she showed up at a very young age, so long ago.)

I wouldn't feed her at first, back then, because we didn't want another cat at the time, but she was actually starving, and within less than a day, I just had to feed her, and then she was "ours". She was my lap cat for years; now she wants to be left alone, poor dear.

Dasher had a different personality before (our even older cat-friend) "Yoda" died some years ago at over 21 years of age. After Yoda left us, Dasher withdrew into herself. (I think it didn't help that we got a kitten, now several years old, "Kiki-jah", several months after Yoda died. Dasher batted Kiki around and hissed when all Kiki wanted was to play...)

I can deal with the loss of dear Dasher, but right now, she's not breathing very well. If she were human, we'd have her on oxygen, maybe in the hospital. We're going to evaluate her during the day today and probably take her in to be "put to sleep", which we eventually had to do for Yoda. I don't want her to suffer.

I will miss her.