My littlest fattest buddy.

Last Tuesday, one week ago, was our Banana's last day. Our wonderful vet came to our house and gave us (and him) hugs and the end was so peaceful, and for that I am very grateful. The past year and a half of his life was not very peaceful at all, and we were glad we were able to put an end to all of his trauma in the least traumatic way possible.

Still: it was hard. So hard. He was such a sweet, hilarious, mischievous, affectionate cat. I've never had a cat before who sought human attention when he was feeling stressed, but this one did. Every time Ben vacuumed he insisted on getting under the covers with me, and when we were at the vet he wanted to be held in a tight little ball with his face buried in somebody's neck. He was just the best boy that we could have ever hoped for when we picked him from the SPCA, even considering he was pretty great in those first few minutes of getting to know him. He will be very much missed.

Within a very short period of time after his passing, though, we realized just how much his problems had come to dominate our lives. When you have to do a thing like medicate a cat every 8 to 12 hours for 18 months, you sort of lose sight of how taxing it is, keeping to that schedule. You forget what it was like to just have a cat you feed and pet once in a while and can leave for long periods of time. I definitely have some guilt over how much I've appreciated the freedom of life without Banana's epilepsy, but as Ben said, we wouldn't have put him to sleep if the negatives hadn't come to outweigh the positives for all of us. And that is true.

Papaya seems mostly unaffected. She has been a little more affectionate than she used to be - she wants to sit on our laps in the evenings now, which was only an occasional thing before - and she is very upset every morning at 5:00 a.m. that nobody is willing to be awake with her, but I'm hoping she'll settle down a little bit with that over time. We think she's going to be just fine as a solo cat overall.

The end of an era! It's just not fair we only got five years with him. There will never be another Banana.