I don't know the answer to that question.  My precious Camille left us and the next thing we knew, Jon Claude started to ail.  He'd been having trouble walking and was limping for quite a while.  But, he talked to us, purred, and spent time with John, his favorite person of all.  Last July, John took him to the vet and we learned he had a kidney problem.  Since he was such a sweetie, he let John give him pills and ate the powdered medicine he mixed into his wet food.  He was also placed on Science Diet k/d.  But, he really didn't like it.  He wanted the dog food or the other kitties' wet food.  When we went to the desert the first weekend in November, our friend commented that he wasn't eating much or drinking much and seemed to be having mouth pain.  John took him to the vet again and learned he had an abcessed tooth or a mouth ulcer.    So, more medicine and more tlc for our boy.  He was dehydrated, and the bloodwork showed kidney failure.  He was sent home with an IV bag for subcutaneous fluid injections.  We started to feed him baby food with the medicine syringe (no needle) and would squirt it into his mouth to avoid the pain.  For a while, that seemed to help.  He became a total lap cat to me and John.  He had never really been my lap cat until last summer.  He was always John's buddy.  He would sit beside me on the arm of the chair.  He and John had such a special relationship.  He never lashed out at John. 

19 years ago, John was on a basketball team with a coworker.  He would come home and tell me about the kitten his friend had gotten.  His friend called it Dog, just because.  This kitten was fiesty and a ball of fluff.  Orange and white, with big paws, and a white diamond shape on his back, he was a purebred Maine Coon.  When Mike learned he was male, he just gave him to John.  I think that was one of the best gifts John ever got.  Neither of us liked the name Dog -- and we tossed around various names.  John wanted to name him Clawed, I wanted to call him Fiesty.  We compromised on Jon Claude Kitty -- after Jean Claude Killy the skier. 

Jon Claude had such a great purrsonality.  He bribed our dog, Grace, with kitty kibble that he would carry in his mouth for her to eat.  She would let him eat out of her dish as payment.  He loved baby formula, and when I babysat, we had to keep our eyes open, because he would grab the bottles and drink as much of it as he could before we caught him.  We had to replace several nipples because he chewed a bigger hole in them to drink the formula faster.  When our friends Mary and Rita stayed at the house to watch our babies for a road trip John and I took, Jon Claude learned to sharpen his claws on Rita's wheelchair wheels.  She would get jostled around, even with her brakes on, because he was a big cat.  She would tell him, "Jon Claude, stop that!"  And we would all laugh. 

He always knew what colors complimented his handsomeness.  He would lie on brown blankets, or black furniture and show off his coloring.  He slept deeply for a cat, and would wake up with his fur all ruffled up -- who knew a cat could get bed head fur?  I could type for hours telling you about his unique qualities.

This is so hard, having to let go of such dearly loved friends and companions.  We got used to having older, settled cats in the house.  Adora is young and energetic.  She doesn't want to sit on my lap for long.  She sleeps in bed with us, but unlike Camille and Jon Claude, she's more of everybody's kitty than just mine or John's.  I miss that special bond we shared -- Camille with me, Jon Claude with John.  I'm sure it will develop more, and I already love Adora, but she's not Camille.  But, I don't really want her to be.  I want her to be herself.  We just have to spend time and learn who that is.

What a time we've had lately.  My precious kitty, Camille got ill.  She was peeing everywhere -- including in our bed when we were in it!  Eeewww.  So, we got her checked out at the vet, and learned she had advanced kidney disease.  It was incurable and there were only comfort measures we could give her.  We held on to her, probably longer than we should have.  So, why wait?  Well,  we shared 19 years of our lives together. 

When she was a kitten, my former roommate brought her out from Oklahoma.  She became my kitty on January 1, 1992 after our other cat was killed the night before.  Camille was named after my roommate -- Kammy.  We had adopted Jon-Claude about a week before from one of John's former co-workers who didn't want a tom because he didn't believe in neutering.  When he learned that Jon-Claude was male, he was going to take him to a shelter, so we took him.  John loved Jon-Claude as a kitten because of how feisty he was.  Camille and Jon-Claude became friends right away.  Jon-Claude and Grace (the dog we had then) were true buddies.  Camille didn't like Grace and would stand up on her hind legs and bat at her like a bear.  Grace would get tired of it after a while and put her paw in the middle of Camille's back and hold her down.  We would laugh and laugh at the antics of our furry kids.  Camille was my baby.  She was not a people kitty, and when strangers came to the house she would disappear.  Eventually, she would stay on my lap and not run away when people came over. 

Camille snuggled me through miscarriages, infertility treatment, and 2 ectopic surgeries.  She had a compassionate heart and more love than her little body could hold.  She slept with us, and would purr me to sleep if I couldn't fall asleep on my own.  She and John had a "love-bite" relationship.  He would pet her, she'd be purring up a storm and then she'd chomp him without warning.  It used to infuriate him.  But he would also swat her bottom and she would lay on her side, and pull herself around in circles and meow.  When he stopped, she would meow up at him, like she was saying why'd you quit? 

She also went through our 2 adoptions, and other life traumas, including snuggling me through lymphoma.  She took such good care of me.  So, at the end, we had a hard time saying goodbye.