I know how you feel. We lost our Oma, a stray taken in on a dark and stormy night in 1997, suddenly to mega-bowel syndrome and colon cancer, all in a space of two days just before Christmas of 2002. The doctor called to tell me that there was nothing that could be done and that she was suffering quite badly. She was eased out of life while purring in my arms. I cried constantly for the next two weeks, and made arrangements with the vet to visit the clinic to be able to just pet and hold their "office" cats.
We found Mitzi on the 4th of July, 2003, eyes just barely opened and still nursing .. we had to buy a baby animal bottle to feed her .. on our doorstep, obviously abandoned by her mother and, as I saw it, a gift for my recovery from Oma. We called her Mitzi (as in Itzy-Bitzy Mitzi) because she was so very very tiny .. just five ounces when we adopted her.
We kept her in a covered playpen in our sitting room for the next few months, as she had to wear an elizabethan collar to keep her from licking an open wound on her right flank. She's now 11 pounds and the happiest, feisty-ist cat.
