My Mum and Dad had to put their 18 year old cat, Tess, to sleep last week. She'd been ill for months, and by Christmas is was obvious it was the last time I'd see her.
I've never been a cat person, or even a pet person, but like a parent who thinks their newborn baby is actually cute, I did grow very fond of Tess. I used to find it hilarious when she'd just saunter in, casually walk around knocking loads of shit over, paperwork, knick knacks, everything, then take a good, long look at my mum yelling abuse at her, and just saunter out again. Tess didn't give a shit. "Little thug", my mum used to call her.
She also (apparently) used to go crazy when she heard my voice on loud speaker, which she never did for anyone else - which is odd, because I never really petted her, or played with her, we always just had a healthy respect from afar.
Anyway, here's my favourite picture of her, taken a year or two ago. It was too hard to make out when I tried to use it as an avatar on here, but the bigger version's pretty great:
