Said goodbye to one of my shop cats "Scruffy" today. She just showed up out of nowhere 10 years ago; she would slink around and we'd leave food out for her, and eventually she let us handle her. She only went AWOL one time: we went on vacation for a week and when we got back she wasn't around. I went looking for her the next day, and found her several houses down, sitting on the sidewalk. I called to her, and she came running home - she hadn't left the yard since. She loved people food, and when we ate outside, she would steal off your plate or right out of your hands if you were not paying attention.
She developed a thyroid condition and kidney issues, so she ate 10 times a day but was still continuously hungry, thirsty and still losing weight. I was medicating her for the thyroid issue twice a day, but I was only really buying time. The last two days it got worse, where she could only manage to eat a little but was still crying that she was hungry. Today she kept trying to get into the house - which she was normally deathly afraid of. She liked hanging out in the shop while I worked on stuff, and the noise didn't seem to bother her in the least.
