I lost my cat in my 20ies, which died of old age. I wasn't living with my parents anymore for years when this happened. I still sometimes weep when I think about it, decades later.
My father got cancer and lived with it for about 7 years before dying. Our relationship wasn't exactly close. When he was in the last weeks, I got so used to the hospitals and health issues that everything seemed so normal to me. I knew exactly what was eventually going to happen though. It only hit me two days before he died, and it was with the brutality of an instantaneous train-wreck.
You could have told me everything, exactly as I wrote it down now, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have made a difference.
I took her to an emergency vet and spent over $3k trying to save her, but at some point it became obvious that we couldn't and so the decision was made to put her to sleep.
Throughout all of this I was upset and worried, but not overly so. In my mind, I cared about her, but it was still just a cat.
Until they put her in my arms. I remember she looked up at me and started purring and I just completely lost it. I'm not one who can cry in front of other people, but at that moment I couldn't help it.
It took months before I stopped turning around expecting her to be there. When it first happened my girlfriend made a comment about killing the dog. I know she didn't mean it, she was just angry and lashing out. She still can't look at a picture of her without crying.
Reading the description of Augustus brought it all back.
I basically don't have a relationship with that neighbor. I haven't gone into detail, but that neighbor was either malicious or dumb. I chose to believe dumb because that sort of anger does no one any good but I can't bring myself to build any sort of relationship with the man.
I miss my programming buddy.