Poor Rosie, my little 15-year-old cat, had to be put down yesterday. She was very ill and unhappy, with a deep-seated infection that two courses of antibiotics had failed to shift. I'll miss her a lot, especially our usual morning greeting - a stroke of her head from me and an affectionate lick of my fingers in return. Her parting gift to me was a deep puncture wound on my finger when I was giving her a tablet last week. It was of a piece with her character - within the pretty domestic puss there lurked a savage feral beast.

Goodbye Rosie.