Ain't no cure for the Christmas time blues

It was a quiet Christmas and New Year as the relatives on this side of the pond are not big on drinking and I am not big on being drunk around sober people. Yes, we all agreed to go the lobotomy route and feed the kids toys while the adults talk DIY (men) and kids (women). This sounds like a horrible generalisation but thats how it really seemed to me and I guess it is a mark of how much my life has changed in the last 12 months that I don't care anymore. Now that I am a home owner I'll talk drywall and power tools with the best of them. Christ.... please shoot me!!!!!

It was all downhill from there I'm afraid. Our ginger cat TT has been sick for a while and in the last two weeks of the year he started leaking water into his abdomen and became horribly bloated. We took him to the vet but they could not find out what the problem was, he just got sicker and we made the decision to have him put to sleep on December 30th. He didn't make it.

My wife found him the night before face down in the basement. She thought he was already dead but when she called my name to come down, he moved his head so she wrapped him in a blanket and brought him upstairs. She held him as he swallowed a few times and took a couple of last gasps for air and died with both me and her stroking him. It was heartbreaking and strange. He must have been down in the basement for a while but somehow found the strength to see us for one last time.

I don't mind admitting I cried. He was an old cat (we think he was about 12 or 13, we inherited him from a friend who found him as a stray, we had him for 7 years) and no doubt his time had come. He came into our life when our friend took a trip to Australia and asked us to look after his two cats, X-10 and Momo.

X-10 is a terrible name for a cat, especially one with an outgoing personality like he had, so his name kind of morphed into Mr Ten, then Mr T, then TT. Most cats I've ever owned were stand-offish and cold, TT was a true gentleman and a dreadful cat in that he was really crap at things that cats do like jumping and hunting. I once saw a cockroach run right across his belly while he just watched it run under the cooker. In his older days he would sit in my back garden and stare at the squirrels less than a foot away. The squirrels destroyed our veggie garden this year so needless to say we were not very encouraging of this behaviour.

When you came home from work TT would come running to greet you, if you were arguing he would come and check on you, he just seemed to genuinely care about people and things and I'm glad I knew the little guy. Rest in Peace little cat.

TT (1994?? - 2006)

In a year when my Mum passed away and our daughter was born. I do not need anymore drama. Good riddance 2006, bring on a quieter 2007.