Here's my pet tribute contest submission!

I have only ever owned one dog, but I lived with several cats.

Of the lot, Minou is the fondest memory. She was an albino -- pure white fur, pink skin and nose, pale blue eyes. Her body was minute, I think she grew up to three-quarters the size of a normal domestic cat, and she was deaf.

Minou was eerily quiet, tidy, perceptive. She could sense a pen being dropped, or a window being opened, anywhere in the building. Once or twice a day, she would go on a hunt outside, but most of the time, she preferred staying indoors, in a familiar environment which she knew thoroughly.

Over the years, she took on uncanny human-like qualities. She would watch tv with my parents in the evenings, and she learned to turn pages in picture books. If you knocked on the floor, she would understand she was being called and quickly show up. In so many ways, she was part of our routine -- feeding her, cleaning her litter, disposing of the dead mice.

Yeah, the mice. There was a small woodland area across the street opposite my house, a kind of reserve that town hall kept pristine and inaccessible to the public. So there were a few rodents, occasionally we saw owls or pheasants... Well if there's a domestic cat's paradise, I think it would look like that. So Minou would go out for a stroll, and later she would return with a dead mouse in her mouth, and deposit it carefully at my feet, and proudly stand at attention, waiting for a compliment or a treat.

Minou's health was ever failing. In the end, she only lived nine years; one morning, she simply didn't wake up. My parents were devastated and decided (not for the first time, nor the last) that they would not take any more pets. Oddly enough, I was not. Sure, I missed my cat, but... She lived a full good life, you know? She enjoyed herself, so much. I was sad to see her go, but happier still, that she had been a part of my time.