Lots of commiserations about your kitties, Dan and Steve.
Been a bad year for our chickens. We have now lost three of our bantams - two to Marek's earlier this year and last night our Pekin bantam, Dilys, succumbed after a very short illness.
But on slightly better news front, our old ginger moggy Willoughby is still pottering about with his arthritic hips. He is 19. And although we thought we would lose Squeaker (17 years old female moggy) when she started having epileptic fits earlier this year, she has now stabilised and is back to her normal disreputable self.
Our young cat, Ozzy, is a different story. He is a big soft lump and hopeless at fighting. Today he came in with a 1cm piece torn out of his scalp. Vet, injection, cleaning it with saline and the Collar of Shame, which does nothing for his street cred since it is pink. I have never seen a cat look more sorry for himself than Ozzy does right now. We should get a discount at the vet at this rate!