Of the two cats who allow me to live in their house, Katy is the oldest, and has proven her psychic abilities from the day she discovered that I knew how to peel back the tab on cans of Fancy Feast.  She stares at me, and like a mind reader, I obey her commands.

She's about to turn nineteen, and it occurred to me that I should do something special to recognize and honour the fact that she has endured almost two decades in my company. Although I have been married twice, Katy is the record holder for consistent companionship.

Like most of the pets I have adopted, Katy was a rescue cat, found in sub-zero weather on a city sidewalk by the Humane Society. They surmised that she was an abandoned Christmas gift, disposed of in January by a family who tired of pet responsibility. After only a few weeks I disagreed. Her feral instincts were part of her genetic make-up.  No question, she was the product of a stray that birthed kittens on the streets.

At the time we had a dog, a big Weimeraner who was terribly lonely after the loss of her buddy, another dog. She liked cats--Suzie loved everything and everybody. Katy rewarded the dog's excited welcome by taking continuous leaps across the room, aiming for the canine's eyes. It didn't take Katy long to train the pooch, despite a hundred pound difference in their size.  Suzie learned to give the kitten a wide berth, waiting patiently while she demanded a first taste of the dog's dinner each night.

Sadly, we lost Suzie a few years later, and Katy was the sole four-footed inhabitant. And then, my son left home and my husband passed away. It was just us two girls.

It was then when I began to appreciate her instinctual nature. In my grief, she never left my side; never an overly affectionate cat, she insisted on body contact, sitting beside me on the sofa and positioning herself under the covers, next to my heart, when I slept at night.

As children often do when they leave home, my son decided to get his own cat. Tony, who shared his home with a Rottweiller, another tenant's pet in the house where my son lived, was fearless and played with 'his' dog, often crawling into the dog's mouth to lick undigested scraps of dinner from the dog's teeth. After a year, my son asked me if Tony could come to my house for a visit while he moved residences. Fourteen years later, Tony is the youngest of my two geriatric cats and still here.

His sudden appearance in my home infuriated Katy. She hated him on sight, but Tony, undeterred by her surly attitude and guttural threats, took one look at Katy and decided--what with years of practice playing with a canine giant--that Katy was his playmate.

I thought they were going to kill each other. On a daily basis, one or the other would attack, and if they were the same colour, I could never have distinguished the two; they rolled on the floor, a snarling mass of fur. I tried to separate them once, and wore the scars for a week. Ironically, if the door bell or phone rang, they would stop immediately and perk up their ears to locate the interference.

Katy and I have had our adventures and disagreements over the years. When she was only a few years old she disappeared at the cottage and I mourned, thinking for certain she'd been killed by the wildlife that lived in the forest. A week later she bounced on the window sill and demanded to be let back into the cottage.

She was a hunter, for certain, preferring mice to moles and treating the chipmunks feigning death in her jaws like toys, releasing them and sitting patiently waiting for them to revive so that she could capture her prey a second time.

Her last hunt, two years ago, was her final safari. She brought the mole to the door, puffed up like a victor and deposited the creature at my feet.

"Good kitty," I said, knowing full well that I was supposed to appreciate the gift. I did not, but more so than Tony's gifts--garter snakes. I can deal with spiders and mice, but I am deathly, irrationally afraid of reptiles. I showed no appreciation for the boy's presentation, and consider myself lucky I didn't have a heart attack when I found a snake in my house.

Tony still thinks he's a kitten. There are many times I was certain my male cat was mentally challenged, or perhaps he just dulled against Katy's sensitivity to her environment. Never soliciting affection, he too is suddenly anxious to sit on my lap or take up his designated spot on the queen-sized bed.

Watching Katy age, I wonder why Tony is becoming more attached to me. Does he know she won't be here much longer?

Katy's hunting stopped with her last trophy. She began to misjudge distance and instead of being able to hop from stool to stool, she would miss, landing on the floor and suffered the indignity. She seemed to accept her limitations and just stopped trying, sitting beside the bed on the floor, waiting for me to lift her up. I got a feline step ladder--what can I say?

Last winter she began to sleep on the air vents trying to absorb the heat--I bought her a heated bed. Being somewhat lackadaisical about changing the litter box, I invested heavily in an automatic 'cat toilet' so that her furry little bottom would never be tarnished by my sloth.

For the last two weeks, she has been consuming vast quantities of water and expecting unaccustomed attention; she flaunts her impatience when I don't respond. She is very vocal, wanting me to go to bed, just as soon as the sun goes down, insisting that I check every food bowl to ensure there is a continuous supply of food and treats.

Suzie died from complications of diabetes and Krohns disease. The excessive thirst is a powerful sign of diabetes, but I don't have the heart to crate Katy and drag her to the vet. For what? Insulin shots? I'm aware, I experienced it all with the dog, but the quality of her life is still there and I have accepted that my old girl can't live forever.

Like every other pet owner, I pray she dies in her sleep. For every lovely creature who has shared my life, I have ultimately demonstrated my love and devotion to the animal by knowing when the time has arrived, and I've been there, beside them when they take the final breath.

It's coming, but not today, which leads me to party plans. What shall I do to make her nineteenth birthday special?