Goodbye to a sweet cat

On Christmas Eve, as calmly and sweetly as she always lived, she died - just stopped breathing while she was cuddling on my chest, like a candle that burns out. She was named Morgana, but coulnd't be more different from her namesake, that scheming and evil sorceress. Ever since she was brought into the house, she was the most nice and easy going cat one can imagine. I remember the day when my 10 year-old son came in with a couple of kittens and a school friend (for protection, I used to do the same, to bring along a friend when I wanted to ask something from my parents, hoping they would be more lenient in front of a third party...), saying triumphantly: "They are abandoned! We must rescue them!" - because recently he had asked me for another cat and I had told him we already had Cassandra, and we shouldn't be bringing more pets into the house unless we rescued some by chance... I tried: "So why won't your friend here take them home?", to which the said friend answered promptly: "My mother wouldn't allow!", and I said: "See? If his mother doesn't allow it, why should I?", to which my son immediately said: "Because you're sooo good!" Yep. he always knew how to trick me...

On the next morning, I got a phone call from an angry teacher - apparently, the kittens were not exactly "abandoned" or "rescued". They were the last ones from a litter a stray cat had had at the school, and that teacher had encouraged the kids to adopt them, but with previous parental permission. My son wanted them, and since I hadn't given the said permission, he decided to take matters in his hands. And then there was a little girl, who had honestly asked for her parents permission, and finally got it, and there were no kittens left because they had been stolen by my little lamb... But there were still no candidates for the last kitten, the female, if I allowed it, he could keep it. So, we gave the little male back and kept the female - Morgana - after a due scolding to the little brat - "I had to do something!".

So, she became her pet, and astonishingly they got along fine - I never would have thought a cat would bond with such a hyperactive and annoying kid, but she did, she loved him, he even taught her to give a high five and she eventually became a little like him: nice, easy going, fat, even using her smelly farts as a kind of secret weapon when she was annoyed... She was always the most sociable of all our cats, only in her old age would she sometimes hiss at a younger cat when he wanted to play and she wasn't in the mood.

For a time, she used to alternate the heat with the other female cat, so we used to have always a meowing and langorous cat about the house. Then she had a pyo-uterus and had to undergo surgery, after that she got fatter and quieter. She was pretty healthy until a couple of years ago, when she started to become incontinent and developed a weakness of her hind limbs. She probably had a myelospondiloarthropathy, but she had no pains, so I just let her be. By that time the little lamb had moved out, and she became increasingly attached to me, making my own cat very jealous, but she couldn't care less - she also reminded me of my son with that attitude. And then in the last few months she got thinner and weaker, until she stopped eating, and finally died, quietly and sweetly as she had lived. I miss her, but I think she had a good life and was a always a happy cat - what more can one wish?