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This post has been sitting in my drafts for about a month now... This time of the year is hard; my Dad's birthday would have been the 9th, the anniversary of my Mom passing is the 23rd, last year my Dad passed away on April 9th, and then a about a month later we had to put Daisy to sleep, finally, my Mom's birthday was May 9th, always right around mother's day.

So, I haven't been able to finish this post, until now.

My wife got Ella when she was just a kitten, her friend's mom used to breed ragdolls. That was 18 years ago. My wife and I hadn't even met yet, so when we got together I knew up front that it was a package deal; “the dog and the cat have to like you, otherwise this isn't going to work.”

Thankfully, they did like me, and Ella wasn't like any other cat that I had ever met before. Which is why it was so hard having to say goodbye to her.

Quite frankly, Ella was almost annoyingly affectionate at times. She just could not get enough attention, and it didn't really matter who it was. It just happened to be me a lot of the time. Ella was aggressively affectionate, even.

I still maintain that I'm not much of a cat person. My wife has joked about having more cats, but I always put my foot down. Vowing to never have another cat.

SURE, no two pets are every the same, even if you're fond of a particular breed, they each have their own personalities. But I definitely made an exception for Ella. I wasn't the only one either, all of our friends who weren't cat people felt the same way. Ella really WASN'T like any other cat they had ever met.

Before my Mom's Alzheimer's got real bad, I used to go and pick up my parents on Sundays and bring them over for dinner. Usually while I was cooking, my parents would hang out in the living room and have a beer or two, my Mom really enjoyed just sitting on the couch and petting Ella, and I know Ella looked forward to it too. Any excuse to to be loved.

She was never an outdoor cat, but became one when we moved into our house. Daisy learned how to use the doggy door and Ella just decided that was also for her, but she never went beyond the fence of our yard, she never climbed out and explored... Except for one time. A late night wind storm blew open our RV gate. I woke up early that next Saturday morning, and I found it odd that as I was getting my coffee neither of the pets were in the house to greet me good morning. Daisy knew she wasn't supposed to leave, so she was just standing there looking out at the open space.

“Daisy, where's Ella?”

Looking at me, and then back out to the exposed neighborhood, Daisy didn't have to say anything, the sad expression on her face was really all I needed. I somewhat frantically woke my wife to let her know that we had to go search for the cat. For at least an hour my wife was in denial.

In tired exacerbation my wife exclaimed: “She has to be here somewhere, she's probably just hiding!”

Not knowing when exactly the gate had blown open, we drove to the shelter, we knocked on neighbors' doors, we stopped any morning joggers, just about anything you can imagine.

But just as we had all buy given up hope of finding her, my wife made another attempt to scout the neighborhood, and there she was. One house down and across the street in the neighbor's yard

She also used to listen, too. I remember one of those Sundays my Mom got so excited when I called Ella inside from the back yard. I used to have conversations with her all the time.

We think she might have had a combination of different health issues. But really didn't start to show any signs that anything was wrong until the very end. We tried to treat her for hyperthyroidism, but she stopped eating and lost a lot of weight really quickly. Seemed like within just a couple of weeks her health went downhill. So we didn't really have much of a choice, and even if we had, there aren't very many options for 18 year old cats.

I'll say the same thing about Ella that I did with Daisy; I'm really going to miss her, I've never known any other cats with such a loving personality. And there definitely haven't been any other cats who have been such a big part of my life.