When you first came to us you were young, not a kitten, but you still had not seen your first year of life. I was four or five, at the time we did not know you were a stray, wandering between our house and the neighbors house. Only when he asked if you were our cat did we take you, he claimed he did not want a cat and would get rid of you.

We don't know what happened to the rest of your litter, or your parents, neither did the man who had found you. But what was known was that you were wild, you hated me, especially my feet. You would come from under cars, under tables, to attack my feet. You even sunk your claws into my head a few times.

The years went by and you started to take interest in other things to claw. Mostly birds and moles, a few lizards lost their tails to you, and so did a few young snakes.
You loved to wander, you would leave our yard and go off to others. We never thought anything bad would happen to you, we didn't know there would be people who would want to hurt a cat who obviously belonged to someone.
We were wrong.

The first time you came home with a wound in your head, we thought you had got in a fight with an other cat. We didn't think someone would have harmed you. You were taken to the vet, patched up, and you continued to explore. The second time you came back with a wound in your head, right where the first had been, we knew it was no cat or other animal.
I still hate to this day that I do not know who shot you, or harmed you. But I'm sure they would hate to know you lasted as long as you did.

We had tried to keep you inside. You hated it. Every chance you got you would try and run outside.

The years passed and you got older. Something bit your nose, and it got infected. Vet visit after vet visit it got better. You still had a scar over your nose. Even though you got older this never slowed you down. It never made you want to stay inside.

As you got older you began to like us more. You liked attention more. Your nose had gotten bad again, and the vet visits continued.

You became known as zombie cat as you reached the age of fifteen. I gave you the nick name because I had almost began to believe I would never see the day you would pass. And I did not want to.

This year you seemed to get worse, but for a while that did not slow you down. My mom and I had to move back in here, and we saw you more. When I went out in the yard you would follow me close by, step for step at times. You no longer were interested in chasing rabbits or birds, it seemed you wanted human company.

The months passed and you survived the summer seemingly fine. At the end of September you began to act weird. You would no longer spring up when I went outside. It seemed your vision was getting worse, as was your hearing.
Some times we would just find you in the yard, laying there. Though..it was never like today. You could get up then. Today, you couldn't get up with out stumbling in a circle and finally falling again.
Your breathing was labored, and you never meowed in response to any of us. You knew it was time..and we did too.

For the later part of the day I held you in my lap. It seemed to comfort you for a while, having somewhere near by that wasn't going on about how you were dying. I took this picture, I wanted to remember some of our last moments, even if it pained me to do so.

You lived a tough life, Tigger. You brought us joy, no matter how mad we would get at the presents of dead animals you brought.
I can't help feeling you deserved much better. You, nor any cat, deserves to suffer. While we were not the ones who harmed you, you were harmed. And I feel we could have done better to prevent that harm.

I knew the day would come, even if I didn't want to admit it. Even if I didn't want to think about it. It is hard to see you go. And I can only hope you will finally find peace, whatever happens to us when we die..

I don't feel like I've lost a cat, I feel like I've lost a friend that I've had for the majority of my life..