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Knowing the signs of renal failure in a cat is knowledge I would almost rather not have - it means an end of options and an end of life.

This morning the half persian, an ex barn cat of indeterminate age, an exceedingly private and anti social animal who never leaves her nook under the bed except for meals, didn't appear for breakfast. I found her curled on the sunroom floor and when I lifted her she didn't file her usual protest. She has never been more than a wisp of a creature so it was hard to tell if she had lost weight but her neglected coat, her dull eyes, her lethargy told the story. Sick at heart, I wrapped her in a blanket and cradled her, wishing that love could repair her damaged insides, praying that the years she had spent with me had been good ones for her, despising the fact that all that was left was to end her pain.

I had thought that the duck pond kitten had been sent because Fate knows a sucker when She sees one. Now I began to wonder if the shy, old barn cat's death might not have been in the cards all along and that this was Fate's way of playing the game - one arrives unexpectedly, one departs just as unexpectedly - all part of the natural cycle, as my daddy would surely tell me, all part of God's plan. There are times when I think that God's plan has too much pain.

She went without protest, taking one long breath and then closing her copper colored eyes, laying her head on my hands and finding, I have to believe, a place to be made well and whole again.