You guys probably won't care, but my best friend, a cat, died today. I said "hi" to him when I came in from work, got things set up for Valentines Day for muhmissus, went back to spend some time with him and he was dead.

Just.

Like.

That.

So I'm not feeling it tonight. I'll be back after we have our backyard funeral, but my nerves are shot. When I was younger (much) my brother died suddenly – just a few hours of pneumonia. Monkey (the cat) was also just over 7 years old.

It wouldn't be such a big thing if I had had other friends either time. But I didn't back then and I don't today. So it really, really, hurts this 67 year old man. In the past 10 years all of my other friends have died, too.

So you guys are the only people I can even tell about this … and I've never met even one of you. Nor am I ever likely to. Family is almost 2,000 miles in one direction, almost 700 in the other. There are other cats here and my wife, but they are going through their own grief.

Gotta go. Sorry.