Thank you all so very much for your kind words and thoughts -- I knew the wonderful people who visit this site would understand and know how to say just the right things! You have been enormously helpful. Cricket was one of the sweetest and dearest of kitties (she was also, quite incidentally, extremely beautiful). She did not have an easy life, having been abandoned in the backyards by someone at a relatively old age. She was very frightened and nervous and this made it hard to get close to her. I fed her and provided shelter for her for several years in the backyard before I was finally able to touch her. She became a very important part of my life and I like to think she realized that she had found a secure, loving and caring place with me. My vet said that her x-rays showed evidence of old healed fractures, so who knows what she might have endured. Over the past weeks she seemed to grow weaker and despite the vet's efforts, her little heart finally gave out. Thanks to you, I'll think of her at the Rainbow Bridge, healed and completely happy at last.