Recommendations wanted

What you have bought in memory of Diego sounds beautiful. Its very important to spend time planning your farewell,and you sound like you are doing well, it helps the greiving process to organise things the way you want them. You said that you were having Deigo cremated, in my work we were taken to a pet crematorium and I have to say it was the most beautiful place, staffed by very dedicated people, of course not everyone is lucky enough to have a garden, and there were lovely gardens where you could scatter your loved ones ashes. I do hope that your other cats are feeling a little better...lots of extra cuddles for all of you
Poppy

 

The wound is slowly starting to heal now, every now and again tears are swelling up but not so often. Last night I called my family back home in Germany and even they were in tears - they only met Diego a few times when they visited and they are not normally too "hung up" on pets, living on a farm where life and death of animals is everyday occurrence and you won't let yourself get too attached. But it helped very much to talk to my sister.
I was digging through lots of photos - digital and paper ones - and was getting desperate not to find the one of him I loved the most. But my former flatmate, we shared at the time when we got the cats and Diego'd sister Banshee is hers, found quite a lot of pics on her PC and my favourite was amongst them! He was still very much a baby then, only 10 or 12 weeks old at the time, and it was one of the very rare occasions when he could make us splitting with laughter (he was, basically, a very quiet and thoughtful cat, very rarely in a playful mood and more attached to us humans than to the other cats, but that was one of the things that made us love him so much, his little thoughtful face - maybe it meant that he always knew he would not be amongst us for very long and he wondered how we would cope with him gone - he simply was one in a million!)

See, I am crying again - but here is the picture anyway (I hope it works!)

 

I also wanted to thank you all again for your kind words.
And yes, I do wish I could have held the dogs back somehow. Thing is, I had seen them running over the hill that leads into the "scrapyard" behind our garden. There are no people there (normally), we just call this place "the scrapyard" but it is just abandoned ground waiting for re-development. Normally it would be fenced in, but youths use it as their friday night partying ground and keep ripping the fencing down, however many times thecouncil puts them back up again.
Anyway, yes, I did see the dogs, but I was naive. Because I had seen the dogs before in the scrapyard on various occasions, sniffing about, and every time I knew Diego was out there somewhere but he always managed to elude them somehow, and when they were gone he would happily wander home. So I was not overly concerned when I saw the dogs approach this time. I trusted he would be smart enough again.
The more I think about it, the more I believe the key to why this happened is our other cat, Shiva. This was the first time he was in the scrapyard as well when the dogs were about (he would normally be in our garden or the neighbour's one, only occasionally venturing further away. He had been in the scrapyard before but only on trouble-free occasions. This time he was over there as well, and he came shooting over the fence into our garden when I first heard the noise from the dogs. So what I am believing more and more (maybe because I want this to be the case) is that Diego may have been a hero, seeing the dogs lurching for little trusty friendly Shiva and giving up his own cover to distract the dogs and give Shiva a chance to get away. And then he was cut off from his own escape route, just two leaps from the fence into safety. It is so cruel...

None of this needed to happen - actually I was meant to be working on Thurday and my husband was meant to be off, but we swapped shifts (we work in the same place) so he could be home on Sunday when we had an appointment with the plumber. My husband never let the cats out when he was home alone, he was always concerned about getting them back into the house and also - bless him! - concerned something might happen to them out there! I now wish I was a little bit more like him - but Diego so loved going out! I could never bear not letting him out when the sun was shining! So now there's always that underlying feeling of guilt, too.
And yesterday the plumber called to cancel and re-schedule, he can't make it today! So it was all in vain, if we had left our shifts as they were none of this would have happened.
I try to tell myself it was fate, but that's a very tough thing to convince myself of, as it was the dearest thing I ever had that I lost by "fate", a pet that I wanted to be by my side for the rest of my life, always be there for me to cuddle. Now gone.

One little comfort - when I got ready for bed in the evenings, little Diego would be sitting in "his" chair in the bedroom, for as long as I would read my book. When I switched off the light, he would come, wander all over me for a couple of minutes and then settle, curling up halfway inside my chest. And I would hold his little paw and tell him that I loved him so much - that was our bedtime ritual. I think I told him I loved him more often than I even told my husband! So he may have had an unfairly short shot at life, but he knew he was loved, and he knew he would be missed if he was gone. We were good to him...

 

In my experience Wishaw it's impossible to keep a cat in if it doesn't want to be - mine climb out of the kitchen window! Also, I think it would be a little bit cruel, cats need to roam. It sounds though like Diego truly had a beautiful life and I hope you can console yourself with knowing that he was happy and that was because of you

 

Here is a picture of the memorial plant for Diego (the little "fillers" are campanula and some trailing things I can't remember the names of just now...)

 

What a lovely choice you have made I hope that you are feeling a little beter today.

Poppy

 

well it is getting better every day, a little bit. It is still hard to come home and have 3 cats waiting for us instead of 4, and missing his little thoughful face with the big sad eyes. But it gets easier now to remember the good times with him rather than justs that last dreadful moment... And the nice big fuchsia will continue to cheer us up.