For the third time in as many months, our hearts and our tangle of fuzzies has suffered another painful loss. Cindy, aka Buttons, aka THE stapler, our 3 1/2 yr old rescue female mitt with a black spot dead center in her nose (hence the name Cindy...as in Crawford with the dark mole) passed away in her sleep surrounded by her mates. She was in the early to mid stages of Lymphoma and was still relatively OK...playing, eating and generally insisting on lavish amounts of attention (if you didn't respond to the latter request, the moniker of "THE stapler" would shortly become evident as she would run up to your feet, nip you on any exposed piece of flesh, and then back up dancing wildly, chortling that you now KNEW she was ready for loads of attention. She trained us all in reverse Pavlovian conditioning.. and she trained us well. She was very gradually weakening and we were all very surprised by her sudden passing. Our tribe has shrunk from 12 to just 7 now...most of the attrition via endocrine cancers. This in a space of just 1 year. None of the kids except one (and he has been operated on 3X for adrenal tumors) has made it past 5. The experience of losing just one fuzzbutt is unbelievably traumatic...I liken it to losing a human friend...and the reality of losing 4 in a year has been almost unbearable. Please, Sandee...come to the end of the bridge with our other lost ones...Bubba, Beeper, Blizzard and Abba the dancing queen to rejoice and welcome our little Cindy. She needs lots of attention now that she doesn't have us any more. At least until we meet again on some fine spring day. We are all just a breath away. Putorius, CP and of course Bopper (healthy), Brando (inoperable kidney cyst), Bounder (beginning stages of adrenal or lymphoma, Bon Bon (healing from adrenal cryo three weeks ago), Bodie (the grand old man)...enlarged heart, 3 adrenal cryos, Clyde (adrenal cryo) and Casio (recovering from intestinal blockage surg. this last week) [Posted in FML issue 3816]