What a fascinating dream about Oscar, Dave's Wife! I can fully understand your sadness when you realized that this was only a beautyful dream because my wife Mechthild has had a similar dream two days after Buttje's death. And like you did she felt very sad after waking up. Today I told her about your dream and especially about your wonderful sentence " At least I had him back for an hour or so in that dream". She looked at me and smiled a little bit and said "Wonderful".

Nevertheless, I think it will take some time to overcome this event. By fortune I found Buttje's body. It would have been more frustrating not to find anything and to expect or to do hope for a long time, that a beloved cat will come back not knowing what happened.
Fortunately(?), we do have some other cats so that gone Buttje wasn't the only one to give love to. But at any time there's the question: who will be the next?
As a consequence every night when a cat comes to sleep next to me I think to myself:"Enjoy these minutes before sleep with this cat. It might be the last time". Afterwards I regularly speak to her something like this:"Maxi/Pipi/Schnucki, please be cautious and wary outside".And then I press her to my body while she purrs like crazy. Sorry, but to me that's what I never would like to miss in my life.

Special thanks go to...

Genie for "Manfred, I suspect that anyone who thinks humans have souls but animals don't has never truly loved and been loved by a dog, cat, bird, or other non-human friend".

GUEST, Cats at work for "My heart goes out to you in your loss and Isolde and Bathsheba send special cuddles and purrs".

Ruth Archer for "It's worse when they're young, somehow...you feel like they were only babies, and you've let them down".

katlaughing for the story about her old lady Siames.

And to all others not mentioned!

Manfred