Today has been one of the hardest days of my life, it has been one of the hardest ones for my husband as well. Last night, around 2:45 am, we were watching Twilight, when suddenly one of our cats started making some really loud, almost cry-like, sounds. My husband rushed to his side, it looked like he had something stuck in his throat. We thought he was trying to cough up a hairball…

He dragged himself under our dining room table and kept trying to cough, or at least that's what it looked like. He pooped on the floor, my husband patted his head to let him know it was ok. He got up and I thought he was going to be ok. He walked across the living room towards the hallway, that's when I realized he wasn't ok. It looked like his paws were half-paralyzed.

When he got to the hallway, he collapsed on his side, I ran into our tech room to try and find a vet that'd have a number to call at 3 am, while my husband tried to help him. What happened after that felt like a blur, I couldn't look. None of the vets in town have an emergency service! I ended up having to call one 45 minutes away, which is really no use when it's an emergency. By the time I got someone on the phone, he wasn't moving anymore. My husband tried everything he could to try to get him to breathe, but there was nothing he could do.

We know that he had a heart murmur, the last vet we took him to before we moved found it and told us about it. After looking at I don't know how many websites, from what I can tell, what likely happened was a blood clot. There was nothing we could have done to prevent it. I've been trying to keep busy, if I stop and think at all, I can see it happening over and over in my head. I don't think I'd ever been that scared in my life. He died in my husband's arms, at almost 3 am. We buried him today. My mother in law got a wooden flower box and improvised a lid for it with plywood, my husband wrapped him in his favorite baby blanket and we put his favorite toys in there with him, then buried him in his mom's yard.

It's still hard to believe he's gone, when I woke up this morning, for a moment it almost felt like it was just a horrible dream, but when I opened the fridg and he wasn't there begging for ham, my heart sank. He was a part of our family, whenever people would ask us when we were gonna start having kids, we just told them we already had two, our cats. My mother in law is allergic to cats, yet she'd come over just to see him. Neither one of us can cry anymore, it's like we're just dried out, like there's no tears left, and we miss him so much.

The only thing I find some comfort in is knowing that at least he had a good life with us. The beginning of his life was tough, being dropped at a shelter, then adopted and brought back, before we adopted him.