Of our three indoor cats, Angel was the first to be adopted, and by all indications considered our other two felines to be usurpers. She'd hiss at them merely for walking by.

Her hostility was no surprise: Adopted as a decidedly solo pet, Angel had found herself with feline housemates within 24 hours of arriving at her new home. At the rescue shelter, she'd been so hostile to other cats she had to be sequestered to her own cage. At home, she almost immediately had to contend with Taro, whom Anne had found sick and abandoned under a freeway overpass. A few days later came the third cat, pregnant and meowing on Anne's doorstep.

Angel hated these other animals but loved humans. My first meeting with her was typical: A fluffy cat with gigantic eyes stared at me from on top of Anne's desk. One pat lead to another and soon she was on my  lap -- piecing my leg with her long, razor sharp claws, and purring. I learned the  next day that her punctures had ruined my slacks and with them an entire suit. Angel lesson number one: Always have a blanket ready.

When I moved in with my now wife, Angel was part of the bargain. It was a win-win for me and the cat: Angel got extra attention that Anne, with two others to worry over, didn't have time to provide. I got  reassurance I was a welcome addition to the household.

Angel wasn't shy about letting me know when I wasn't living up to my end of the deal. When I became Gawker's night editor, I made sure to give Angel a shout out online, but she wasn't interested in fame. When my shift stretched on too long, she'd come to the door of my office and start meowing. She wanted attention, and I'm ashamed to say I wasn't always friendly about responding to her entreaties. But I did sometimes foist her up on to my big glass desk (she loved new materials -- see her sitting on the book above), or onto a blanket on my lap (claw protection!), as seen in the picture up top. And when I woke up the next afternoon she usually got some quality couch time.

I'm trying not to dwell on how she passed. She lived a good long life; we don't know when she was born, but last year a vet estimated she was fully 11 to 15 years old. She was happy. Between the two of us, she got plenty of attention. And she had a yard and (at her insistence) neighborhood to roam, from which to pluck the occasional mouse, including two this past season.

On Thursday morning I was blogging for Gawker in my living room. I heard a series of noises common to our neighborhood: A dog barking, the rummaging of recycling bins, more barking. But my cats were suddenly alert, so I went outside. I soon spotted a gray, short-haired dog thrashing about across the street -- with something brown and fluffy underneath. It was a vicious-sounding, decent-sized animal, and I started screaming the worst threats I could imagine, as though it mattered what I said. The dog, suddenly docile, gave me an almost friendly look and immediately ran off. I remember it was wearing a collar and clearly loose from its owner.

I was crestfallen to find, at the end of our neighbor's driveway,  Angel,  immobile, her fur muddled and reeking of dog spit.  I picked her up, frantic. As I remember it, Angel  looked at me and made some faint vocal noises, not quite meows, as I rushed her home. I grabbed my keys, and sped off to the animal hospital.  Despite immediate attention,she was dead on arrival. Snapped neck, internal bleeding, or both. I somehow had no clue she might be gone until the vet told me. I blame those big eyes, open right through to the end, for artificially inflating my spirits.

After driving to my wife's office to deliver the news, I asked to be allowed to finish out my workday, and kept coffee meetings San Francisco.

Thursday night we buried Angel in the yard beside our house. We laid her down with lavender stalks and the sort of thing she always enjoyed sleeping on: fresh laundry, in the form of a newly-cleaned t-shirt. Tidying the kitchen this weekend, Anne retired Angel's food bowl.

Teary apologies won't do Angel or I much good, nor is there much point in obsessing about how I might have reacted more quickly to an incident that played out, start to finish, over about 20 seconds. So I hope I'm done doing both.

Angel will be everywhere Anne and I turn for a good long while, in clumps of fur on jackets and shirts, in small holes in various pairs of leather shoes, and in the punchline of jokes about the most demanding lady of the house. And, inevitably, she'll be in my further regrets. Not because I failed to save her life, though that may well haunt me, but because I wish I had enjoyed Angel even more when she was still here. I had four wonderful years with her. And to think there was a time when I didn't want cats. Thank you for all the distractions, Angel. Sometimes a guy needs to be knocked off course.

We've been dying to return to Japan; looking through old pictures I realized these weren't on Flickr yet, so here, EAGER READER: pictures of my trip to Japan with Anne nearly six years ago.

Noteworthy things about Japan I remembered from these pictures:

• In Kyoto, consider indulging the local passion for "WHITE LOVER."
• Better cheese in the subway convenience stores than you will find in the best U.S. specialty shops, due both to our national paranoia (no luscious young "au lait cru" cheese for us -- unpasteurized fromage cannot be imported to the U.S. fresh) and Japan's general awesomeness when it comes to food quality (great food -- French, Japanese, Korean and otherwise -- all over the place, maybe due to density). (More cheese pics here, here, here)
• A long wine tradition! Here's an article Anne wrote at the time for Joi Ito's Chanpon. A winery outside Tokyo was kind enough to tour us and provide an executive we could quiz after. They also had a museum; here's a shot of some old Japanese bottles, some prized French wines they were saving and, of course, the shop.
• I miss Anne's aunt and uncle and cousins -- and aunt's cooking -- terribly.
• Really consider Miyajima if you go to Japan; it was a major highlight of our trip. Features several awesome monkey signs!
• Also underrated: Hiroshima.
• Even more underrated: Squiriting mayonaisse on Japanese food like this in a bar. (Okonomiyaki)
• If you show up at the Japanese Foreign Press Club without a connection, they will politely find a kindly journalist (perhaps Bangladeshi) to vouch for you. You just have to convince him you're legit!

I'll miss the drunken email tips, clipping the late shows, election nights, White House news conferences, writing three-hour posts, being a generalist, having no immediate editor, gossip roundups, IM chats with Blakeley and once and present Valleywags and waking up to a day's worth of feedback in my inbox. Among other things. But maybe what I'll miss the most is the taste of my first post-shift drink at 4 or 5 in the morning. Especially on Thursdays.