Hamish

We got Hamish and Arthur from a rescue home in August last year. Arthur was a large, vocal, ginger and Hamish was a tiny pretty tabby. Both settled down well, joining us for walks around the estate in the evening.

Arthur has always been full of joie de vivre. He does everything with gusto. Charging about the house, thundering up and down stairs; throwing himself down when tired and being asleep within seconds. He eats anything and everything in huge volumes.

Hamish, on the other hand, found life much more difficult. He soon began to be much pickier about what or when he ate and in tiny quantities. Deciding that he wouldn't eat something at all - usually when we'd just bought a load of it. He spent a large part of the winter literally under the wood burning stove, hunched and miserable looking. Instead of playing on an equal standing with Arthur, he became an easy target and Arthur began to jump on him and we had to separate them at night.

He was checked out at the vets and blood tested and nothing was found to be wrong. With the way of small children at the doctors, he would be perfectly all right at the vet's, wolfing down the cheese triangles she gave him and waiting til he got home to throw them up.

As the weather warmed up he seemed to improve and we found that he loved duck necks which seemed to boost his strength. But over the last few weeks he was gradually eating less and less and for the last week or two when it has been very hot he seemed to get even worse and it had obviously become too much effort to move about much. He has never drunk much and as that stopped too it began to seem that he really couldn't last much longer. Yesterday and the day before he didn't eat anything and only drank a bit from the swimming pool with difficulty - doesn't want the fresh water in the bowl, only swimming pool water. Found him under a chair last night, tried to give him a drink by putting water on his mouth which he licked off and then was very sick. Put him on Grandad's chair for the night and found him in the same position this morning but obviously dead.

Poor little scrap.