Mr. Bojangles, My friend is gone Options

[BJsFriend]

My friend and I spent 12 years together. I hope he had a good life. The house is so quiet without him and everything is so different. I'm haunted by his passing- it was sudden and very unexpected. I should have seen it coming though- I've heard that cats will act like kittens before they go. That is exactly what happened for BJ. It began about two weeks ago. I can still hear his cries that brought me to find him in the kitchen, paralyzed and scared. I cuddled him and told him it was ok and that I love him. As soon as I got to him, he stopped crying and died. I'm pretty sure he had a stroke. That morning, his tongue was sticking to his mouth and at the time I thought he just needed a drink of water. I think it must have been numb. When I got to him, all he could do was yell for me. He couldn't move and he didn't look at me until I picked up his head to look in his mouth. I couldn't find anything in there and I know now that he couldn't have been choking on anything because he was able to yell for me. He couldn't close his big, beautiful eyes, so I did for him. When I got up from the floor, all I could do was scream at the top of my lungs, as loud as I could for as long as I could. For the next 30 minutes, I waited for my wife to get home and we have cried about it ever since. She is better at dealing with it that I am- no matter who passes away.
She came home to find him on the kitchen rug that I put him on to get him off the cold floor, and under a towel he liked to lay on to keep him warm. He was still so soft and so warm. His passing still haunts me even though it was on leapday.
What's crazy is that we spent exactly 12 years together- he found me on leapday 1996. I miss him so much and I just want to hold him again. Did I do the right thing? I keep thinking that maybe if I would have tried to resuscitate him, maybe he would still be alive. But he really couldn't move and I'm really not 100% certain what killed him. I think that if he had a heart attack, he wouldn't have been able to call for me. Maybe if I would have been with him just before, I could have been with him longer and he could have passed more peacefully. I'm just eaten up inside about what I could have done differently so that he wouldn't have been so scared. I have this pain in my stomach that feels like a rock is in there. Our other kitty, Opie has always known Mr. BoJangles and he keeps looking for him. I think lately he is just missing him because yesterday, he found a clump of hair from BJ's brush and sniffed it for about 5 minutes. He won't go to the litterbox, he goes beside it and his eyes just look so sad. My two dogs are beside themselves and even though the TV is on in the livingroom, it is so quiet in the house. It was always BJ who would go around the house and 'mer' at everything and everyone. He would march from room to room and seem to be in two places at once. I can't stop crying when I think that BJ isn't here anymore. He is being cremated today or tomorrow and he will be back in the house by the end of the week. I think he would like that because he always did like boxes.