Our beloved cat Rudy died today, at the young age of eight. 

We took him from the emergency care folks over to the animal hospital for surgery this morning – didn’t say a proper goodbye, perhaps because we knew it probably might be goodbye for good – and left him there, rubbing his face against the front gate of his carrier.

At 11:30, the surgeon, Dr. Sager, called to tell me that he had bad news: Rudy’s intestine was fully cancerous, and his liver was almost completely gone (perhaps because of the peritonitis).  The humane thing to do was to put Rudy to sleep, and not try to wake him up.

And so Rudy is gone, and I miss him – a lot.  He was a great cat, and we loved him.