On Friday, February 18th, 2005, I brought Buttercup to the vet. It had been a terrible month, as Claudia (my wife) had passed away just a few weeks before. Buttercup had been throwing up for a couple of days, and I decided it was time to get her to a specialist. I set the appointment for Friday afternoon.

That morning, I noticed that Buttercup looked dehydrated. I tried to give her some water, but she bit me. I pushed her away, then observed her twitching and clawing and acting very strangely. I watched for a couple of minutes, then tears started to flow. I realized my kitty was dying. It was 6:30 in the morning.

The vet opened at 7:30 am, and I was there waiting for them. I brought in Buttercup, who perked up a bit when she saw the other people. The doctor arrived a few minutes later, then took Buttercup into her office. A quick examination confirmed Buttercup was very dehydrated and, in the words of the vet, "that's one sick kitty".

The vet called me back at 12:00 noon while I was driving in the car with my boss and co-workers. She explained that Buttercup had a huge tumor in her intestines, roughly the size of a baseball. I said I would stop by on the way home from work to see for myself. Now I had to get through the rest of the day without weeping constantly. It was a tough day.

When I arrived at the vets office after work, she showed me the x-rays and ultrasounds. It was plain that this was serious. The vet said she could operate, at a cost of over three thousand dollars, but the chances of survival were low - and chemotherapy on a cat is not at all pleasant for the animal.

I examined all of the labs. I looked over the x-rays and ultrasounds. I talked to the vet for quite some time to determine if there was any hope at all. She made it very clear - this cat didn't have long to live and my poor Buttercup was in terrible, agonizing pain. I knew what had to be done...I didn't like it and my heart felt like it was breaking, but I didn't have any other rational choice.

The vet brought in Buttercup and left me alone, for the last time, with my beloved cat. I looked at her, gave her a big hug, and said my goodbyes. She looked at me with tears in her eyes, and I got the clear message that it was okay. She knew what was going to happen, and she knew there was no choice. I cried and called in the vet. It was all over in less than 2 seconds. A quick shot and my cat went to sleep forever.

My heart broke three times in one month. How much pain can a person take?

These are the last pictures I took of Buttercup, all on that day.

We already had two cats, but I felt like we needed another one for some reason. My wife loved animals and I felt like it would give her a little more company. I've found that pets can be great friends and companions, and our two other cats had already proven themselves to my wife.

Our cat Tabby had proven himself over and over as a companion. Claudia has terrible asthma (and no, she's not allergic to cats, thank god), and whenever she had an attack Tabby would hover over her, sleep with her and just be there. Once when she had a very had attack he came running out, almost as if to tell me something was wrong, and forced me to come into the bedroom to check her out!

I decided to get her another cat, and concluded the best thing to do was to go to the Humane Society to pick one out. This was more difficult than I expected, as they are very choosey about who gets their animals. They wanted to be sure that we would provide a good home and not just abandon the animal after a few weeks or months. They even needed a note from our landlord saying it was okay to have animals in the apartment! I kind of felt like we were adopting a child and not a kitten.

Finally we got through all of the red tape and the big day arrived. We climbed into the car and went down to the Humane Society building, then proceeded directly to the cat area.

There were dozens of cats, but most of them were older. We specifically wanted a kitten, which made it more difficult. Kittens go fast and there were very few of them left. It was kind of heart breaking also, as the older cats were charming and happy and wanted to be loved, but we just didn't want an older cat.

We were getting frustrated and were close to giving up when one of the cats noticed me. It was an orange tabby cat. She was meowing at me loudly, almost appearing to demand that we take her with us. We feel in love immediately as we had found out cat.

A few days later we took home our new kitten, naming her "Buttercup". She proved to be a terror, shredding everything in sight.

One day Buttercup decided that she was terrified. Everything scarred her. As near as we could tell, she had bitten into an electric cable or something and just became afraid of everything. She was fine physically, but watching her walk around the living room was very amusing. She would cautiously circle a shoe as if it was a dangerous animal, then jump five feet in the air if something moved.

Buttercup also became terrified of the floor at night. She refused to jump off the bed, and had to be carried from the bedroom to the food bowl. There were a couple of times that she jumped into the air to come down claws first on my arm, requiring lots of band-aids and antiseptic.

In the couple of years since, Buttercup has slowly lost her terror of everything and settled down to be an almost normal cat. She is still a bit jumpy but otherwise, she's fun and happy.