My deepest gratitude to everyone. You can't know how much your stories and support have meant to me.
Here's the update: Tuesday, Henry took a turn for the worse, and nothing the vet did seemed to help him. We went to see him that night, and he was obviously laboring to breathe. So we put him down. We were with him to the end.
I've done this before, and so I knew what we were in for. Even though he died very peacefully, it was a trauma to hold his head and his paw while he slipped away. That night, the wheels in our head were spinning and the slide show wouldn't stop, to the point where we couldn't really sleep or eat without the aid of a tranquilizer. And so we would like to thank the Beam family, makers of Jim Beam bourbon for over 200 years.
Neither of us were very well going to work the next day, and so we looked around for a cat to adopt. We found a very sweet 1 1/2 year old boy who looks a lot like Kaufman's cat. He was at a US chain store called Petsmart, which works with a rescue group called Lucky Ones. He's declawed, and while we would never, ever declaw a cat, we figured hey, at least he won't cause thousands in apartment damage, the way Henry did. Mostly, we can't believe anyone would give this cat up for adoption, so we're trying to find out his story.
It helps to have an animal in the house. We can't live without them. But still, we're hurting from our loss, and this is bringing up other losses we've had, both animals and people. It is also bringing us closer together and making us think seriously about moving to be closer to family. It sounds funny, all this profundity coming from the death of a kitty, but there it is. Maybe that's what he was here to teach us.
Thanks again, all. You're good friends.
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