This is me and I'm completely content...No, not the one with the little pink nose, that's Cleo, I'm the one she's sleeping on. She thinks my lap is one of the best places to sleep and why not, I'm a comfortable dude after all.

This is what a typical night of watching TV looks like in my household with Cleo and Merlin on our laps, or close by. They wait for us to settle down, choose their spots very carefully then settle in to do what cats do best, snuggle and sleep.

I've often said that I prefer my cats to the company of most people and whilst I say it with a wry smirk on my face I actually mean it.

We choose our friends with a great deal of care and are careful with who we actually call friends; We never confuse the word friend with the word acquaintance. There is a distinct difference, at least in our lives anyway. Our cats though, well they're more than friends really.

As with most cats, ours run our household and everything revolves around them. They wake us up in the morning with a cold nose to the eye or ear, a pat on the cheek with a soft paw maybe. We feed them when they want, play with them when the want, put up with a plethora of cat toys all over the place and have no less than five cat-scratchy-castles around the house...Which protects our furniture from their claws. It's all good though, and we'd have it no other way.

We love our cats, and pour a great deal of our time, effort and emotion into them...But we know they will leave us.

We have lost a couple of cats, Dixie and Gemmi and a much-loved, and gigantic, rottweiler called Benson. It's always difficult. For me it's the fact that they can't talk back like a human can to acknowledge how much we love them. Sure, they purr and snuggle in our laps, extend their little paws to rest on our hands and rub up against us, all signs of affection, but do they know how much we love them? Some would say yes, I suppose, but how could we ever know?

Merlin, our male cat is twenty two years old and is losing weight. He used to be a strong lad, muscled and burly but now he's a skinny little fella and we know that his days are numbered.

These days Merlin gets away with just about anything...Not much different to always, but we let him eat as much as he likes and we never neglect him if he wants to play, or just say hello. You can see him above, laying outside. We don't take him out much as we're worried that he may run off as cats tend to do when they are very old, but we take him out because he loves it, and we stay with him and play. He has a good time but does a lot of laying around too these days.

We're not ready to lose our friends yet, we love them so much and are going to be devastated when they go. Merlin will be first of course and it is going to break us up, Cleo included. She idolises Merlin and the two can often be found cuddling or playing together and Cleo follows him around like a little lost puppy. It's going to be terrible to lose him, but also to see her lose her friend.

I haven't posted much about our cats as I always seem to have so much to say about other things, but they are really the two most important things we have, other than each other.

We pour so much of our love and affection into them and they mean so much to us...All with the understanding that they will go before we do. It's crazy really, but to be honest we'd not have it any other way. Some may not understand, but I know there's many here who have pets of their own and and would be equally distraught on losing them...But we'll go through that, as long as we have them with us for a time.

Right now, as I type this, Cleo is beside me on the couch. She has her head leaning on my leg and she's purring loudly. Content? Yes I am. (As she obviously is too.)

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Tomorrow isn't promised - Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default
_{An original post written by a human
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