I'm very sorry for your loss. I had two cats that my mom had had for years before I was born, and I grew up with both of them. One was name oscar, who was white, and Matilda (boy who my mom thought was a girl, and only found out after he knew his name) who was black. They used to play with each other every day. Then, while we were getting ready to move from Irving to Lewisville (Texas), Oscar got a really bad tooth infection. We had always noticed that his mouth stank way worse than Matilda's, but we didn't know it was unhealthy until it was too late. In his last week he was fed lots of meat babyfood, sardines, and the wateriest catfood we could find, even having to feed him out of a syringe because he wouldn't eat. When my mom brought him to the vet, she would have put him down, but it was my sisters birthday. He died that week at the age of 15. Matilda, on the otherhand, lasted about six more months. He was so old, and he snuggled with me every night, but that changed when we were moving. I insisted that we bring him to our new house so he could be at at his brothers funeral the week after he died. We got there, and we were about to burry him, but my dad couldn't find a spot of dirt soft enough to stick a shovel in the ground. My parents refused to bring Matilda back to the house we were moving out of. About a month later, we finally moved to our new house in Lewisville. My parents wouldn't let him sleep with me anymore because they didn't want him to throw up on the new carpet in my room. I did, however, sneak him in a few times when they weren't home. We had a small room we kept him in, but we never really let him out. A few months later, I started letting him out everyday, sitting with him on the couch. My parents were reluctant, because he was "scratching up the new leather couch we haven't finished paying for". A week later, my mom told me that I should go check on Matilda, because he wasn't doing so well, and these might be his final days. I went into his room and saw him laying on his bead. "Aww, he's sleeping!", I thought. "He's defiantly sleeping." "Wait.. No, he's just sleeping." "He's not sleeping." The realization came to me like a shard of ice in my chest. My parents didn't believe me when I said he had fleas and ticks, despite him being covered in flea dirt, and him having no hair on is arms and legs from the constant itching and scratching. I finally proved it to them when all of the blood filled ticks fled his body. We baried him along with oscar, our two hermit crabs, a squirrel (long story) and a can of tuna I had planned to bury Oscar with. Matilda had died the day before school started again from winter break on January 3rd, 2016. What made it even sadder, is that he was 19, and I always just knew he would make it to 20. Atually, his birthday is sometime this week. He was my best friend, and what made it worse is that I had to go to school the next day. This story is exactly why I got a tortoise. I wanted a pet that could outlive me, so I wouldn't have to mourn it's death. The sadness of a death will never be gone forever, but it does subside a bit. Just know that, through it all, your tortoise will always be with you.
