Bluewillow, your cats are adorable. I'm happy for you that they provide you with comfort and obvious adoration.
I have a psychotic rescue cat who weighs about 25 pounds and is so annoying and nuts he provides me with plenty of laughs. One of the great loves of my life is my dog, a Brittany Spaniel (Luc) and another is a chocolate Lab, my granddog (Bailey). Luc was still very wild and hyper when I was diagnosed, but somehow he knew to be careful and snuggly with me after all the surgeries. He is very intuitive. He'll take a nap with me anytime I ask him. After my liver resection he would curl up against my incision, putting just enough pressure on it to splint it. Often, when I cried he cried. He is a "verbally" very expressive dog (especially when it comes to whining, guess he got it from me
) but he's been a constant buddy and I'm not sure I would have recovered without him. On the frequent nights that I can't sleep (still) he will get up and down with me as many times as I do.
My granddog Bailey, who is heading into his elderly years, is the smartest, sweetest dog ever born... I'm positive of it. He has big time OCD, which is endlessly amusing to me. He has to walk around the outside couch 7 times before he drops his ball to be thrown. Honestly. Currently he is suffering from psychogenic drinking. He scared the p*ss out of all of us as he was drinking about 3-4 gallons of water a day. It looked for all the world like he had developed diabetes mellitus or diabetes insipitis. Tons of lab work later, he just feels like neurotically drinking. Nothing at all wrong with him (thank God). Bailey was diagnosed with malignant mast cell tumors 6 weeks after I was diagnosed. I was more freaked out and terrified about it than my diagnosis. He had massive surgery, without clear margins on one area. We live with out fingers crossed that he won't have a recurrence.
Anyway, they've all helped so much in my recovery, and even though the cat is boop-shooby, I love them all very much.