Oh, Brenda, as a lifelong animal lover, this hit me where I live. I'm in my late 60s and my husband is 70. Our "kids" are our three cats, age, roughly, 13, 6, and 4. My one daily prayer is that we outlive them. My sister tells me not to worry, that if something happened to us, she'd make sure they found homes, but my sister has three big dogs. Her son, however has two cats, but still, you can never be sure, right?

We've shared our lives with cats for over 30 years and six have passed. I'm going to do everything possible to "keep on, keepin' on" for the duration.

Thanks for writing this.