I know how you feel and I struggle with the guilt all the time.

I was at work when my cat passed. I shouldn't have left in the morning when he meowed at me, but I had to go to work. He was gone by the time I came home, he passed in the same place I left him.

Everyone says he meowed to say goodbye, but he was the kind of cat that was velcro'd to me and I still feel that I should have been there....