Haje

Here's my @Spectator tribute to my wonderful cat, Louie, 'Nothing prepares you for the death of a pet' spectator.com/article/nothin… My companion – my friend – Louie died suddenly on Tuesday. He was nine (his tenth birthday was due next month) which, in cat years, made him middle-aged. No one saw it coming – he’d had his six-monthly check-up a few weeks ago and was seemingly fit and well. If you don’t have a pet, you can’t fully appreciate the depth of the bond and the corresponding rawness of the grief. Louie has been my constant companion, especially since I divorced and moved into my own flat six years ago. Living alone, I regarded Louie – formal pedigree name Albalou Bojangles, a British shorthair – as my closest friend, in the sense that I saw more of him (it seems bizarre to be writing in the past tense about him) than anyone else. He was there throughout Covid, when I was shielding, and through treatment for my leukaemia. My whole flat is a reminder of his presence with scratch pads, toys, cat furniture, and all the other paraphernalia that comes with a cat. The morning after his death was so difficult. We’d had a morning routine which was the same every day. I slept with the bedroom door closed, as otherwise Louie would be in the room demanding food. At around 5.30 a.m. he’d start scratching the door and meowing loudly. I’ve always been an early riser anyway so I’d get up and go to the kitchen to give him his food as he rubbed himself against me, as if saying ‘thank you’. Then he’d push his face against the shower glass as I washed and follow me to my bedroom, jumping on the bed while I dressed. Louie would follow me into the study as I looked through the papers and hop onto my desk, usually bashing my keyboard. That same routine, every day. But not any more. I’m bereft. Louie had spent the day with me on Tuesday as I was having a new boiler fitted, so I was keeping him out of the way. At around 2 p.m. he was – as he often did – lying across my tummy as I watched TV on the sofa, purring happily as I stroked him. I had to disappear to my study for ten minutes to check some edits on a piece and when I got back, he was lying outstretched, all 35 inches from his nose to the start of his tail, under the dining table, where he never sits. I went to stroke him and he didn’t move, so I assumed he was in a deep sleep. I called ‘food’, which always wakes him up, and there was nothing. Then I realised he wasn’t responding at all. I called the vet in a panic saying I thought he had died – I couldn’t quite tell if he had actually stopped breathing. I’m only five minutes from the practice and when we got there, the vet confirmed he had no heartbeat. As I think about it now, I’m struck by how he must have known something was happening and so took himself to a new place to stretch out ready to go to sleep forever. It was all so sudden – ten minutes before he went he was (or at least seemed) totally fine. The vet said it was most likely a stroke or a heart attack, perhaps after some underlying issue. The only good thing is precisely that it was so sudden and so he didn’t suffer. On Wednesday night I went to the kids’ house to break the news. Cat owners will know that wonderful feeling when you open the front door and your friend has somehow sensed your return and is sitting there waiting for you. I live in a maisonette and Louie would almost always be at the top of the stairs as I put the key in the door. There was no Louie that night when I got home. My flat is empty. Rest in peace, my friend.

amazon's internal A.I. coding assistant decided the engineers' existing code was inadequate so the bot deleted it to start from scratch that resulted in taking down a part of AWS for 13 hours and was not the first time it had happened incredible ft.com/content/00c282…