Who's The Daddy: The link with our daughters’ golden childhood has ended

He’d been off his food for less than a day, and The Boss took him to the vet first thing Monday, assuming that he had a problem with his teeth. But when the vet got him to open wide she saw a large, fast growing, aggressive tumour under his tongue and said “weeks”.

As regular readers may know, Daughter #2 is currently working on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, and loved that cat like a child. We got the pair of them as rescue kittens in January 2010, when she was seven, and they bonded immediately. Now 22, Mr Robbie has been with her ever since.

We finally got in touch with Daughter #2 late on Monday and told her the vet’s diagnosis. We knew what had to be done and Mr Robbie was booked in first thing the following morning to be put to sleep.

Mr Robbie had always been a very gentle, if somewhat loud, presence in the house. Over the past year or so he and our reactive sighthound Walter had managed to bury their differences. Mr Robbie even sat with him through the terrors of Bonfire Night, when we pumped the Calming Classical Music For Dogs playlist through the speakers every night for two weeks in an attempt to take his mind off it all.

And more often than not, we’d find them cuddled up on the sofa together first thing in the morning. Which is unusual for Walter, who goes from 0-100 in 0.5 seconds every time he sees a cat on a walk.

So on a cold Tuesday morning we took Mr Robbie to the vet, who could not have been nicer. She explained what would happen and me and The Boss stroked him as she administered the injection and he was gone in two seconds.

As deaths go, it was calm, peaceful and gentle.

But it hit us like a steamroller. Maybe it’s because he was Daughter #2’s cat, a link to her childhood, and she wasn’t here to see him off. It was a very tough day and our house, with just me, you and a dog named Boo, is eerily quiet.

As well as being a champion mouser and an all-round ace cat, Mr Robbie was one of those felines who you could always hear before you could see. He was capable of holding a conversation, about what God only knows, but like his brother Marleyboo, has left a cat-shaped hole on our lives. And a living link with our daughters’ golden childhood ended.

Even though they’ve grown and flown, those little black and white alley cats were part of our family during magical times when our kids were at primary school. When we were all under the same roof. And even though they’re making a success of their young adult lives, way back then we didn’t know just how good we had it.

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