When we got up Wednesday morning, Malkah was lying on the bathroom rug downstairs and could not rise.  We succeeded in getting an early appointment with a vet where we go, although our own vet was not in.  We had hoped Malkah could be given a shot that would get her back on her feet, but there was nothing that could be done.  She was dying.  So they sedated her and the vet gave her a lethal shot, all very considerately done.  She did not move when taken from the carrier.  She lay there and fell asleep and her heart stopped.  Woody buried her in the area of our land, on the edge of the woods in a row of bushes where we put the bodies of our cats.  in the spring we’ll plant a bush over her, a blue holly I think.  Her spot is right next to the Zepherine Drouhin climbing rose, a pink fragrant Bourbon rose that has grown there even longer than the almost 18 years Malkah lived with us.  I have been crying a lot.  She had withdrawn so much during the last six months from the other cats, including her adopted daughter Efi, that I don’t think the other cats will be as upset as they would have been had she died a year ago.I’m sure Efi will look for her, but if Malkah had died a year ago, I don’t know what Efi would have done.  They had been inseparable – they ate together, often from the same dish, slept together, groomed each other, did in fact everything together except use the litter box.  But as Malkah withdrew into her pain and weakness, Efi has begun to be with the other cats and with us far more.  Cats do mourn.  Dinah never got over the death of her son Oboe and looked for him, called for him until her own death a year and a half later.  When Jim brought home Boris with whom he had fallen in love, Boris who had been feral and sleeping in a tree lived only a year and a half longer.  After his death from feline infectious peritonitis, Jim Beam searched for him calling loudly through the house for at least a month. Other of my cats have mourned their companions.  This is not anthropomophizing.  Other animals besides us fall in love, make close friends and of course enemies.Malkah had been with us for so many years, since she was a starving, flea ravaged and sick feral kitten, I will miss her, I know.  She grew into a beauty, medium long fur, a cameo orange tabby with very white belly and paws and under her chin where she loved to be rubbed.  She became very affectionate with both of us.  She also became very wise.  She always knew when something was happening way in advance of the other cats.  When new cats came to join our family, she was always accepting of them.  She seldom quarreled with any of the other cats. Until the last year and a half, when she did not like something they were doing, she had only to glare at them and they would stop.  She was a large cat and had considerable presence.  She was the matriarch.Malkah was a wonderful communicator, mostly using body language rather than meowing.  She could tell you exactly what she wanted most of the time – and Wednesday morning, she seemed to want to go to sleep permanently.  She was tired of being in pain, tired of trying to make it to the litter box, tired of having trouble climbing stairs.  She did not cry on the way to the vet.  When the vet gave her the sedative, she actually purred. She seemed to have some idea what was happening and to accept it.As I write this paragraph, two days have passed.  Efi is still depressed but is reacting by trying to be with us and the other cats as much as possible.  Mingus is the next most upset.  There has been a very large cat prowling around outside and I believe he associates Malkah’s disappearance with this cat.  Somehow this cat has taken Malkah and intends to come inside and replace her.  He woke me last night yowling through the glass at the strange cat.  We seldom see another cat. This one is an unaltered tom, and his response to being yowled at was to spray all over the rhododendrons, which infuriated Mingus. I hope things calm down.  All the cats are a bit jumpy.  Cats do not like change, for the most part, although they are pigs for novelty in their food.I keep expecting to see Malkah in her usual haunts, but she is not there.