hi mate,HUGE catfan here,i'm not afraid to say i shed a tear for you and your gf when i came across this post tonight,we do love our cats and thats a fact,
something which helped me when we lost one was knowing that you gave them the best life possible and like you say old smudge looked very very content "doing what smudge did best",
you and your gf loved smudge and you did the best for your cat,there are cats who never have such good owners,
my deep sympathies mate,(only cat people knows cats like we do!)

Really sorry for you, it's always awful losing a pet. We lost our Pippin about a month ago, she seemed absolutely fine one day then choking and fighting for breath the next. It turned out she had a massive tumour in her chest cavity, all very sad. She didn't suffer though and it sounds like yours didn't either. I was in the same quandry wondering whether or not to wait and see if things cleared, but I'm glad we took her. We've both absolute cat fans and luckily Pippin's sister Tigger is still going strong.

Sorry for your loss, G. We had one of our cats put to sleep just a few weekends ago; he was sixteen and had a bit of a rough start to life when he lost a front leg at two – but gad failing kidneys, had stopped purring, and his quality of life had rapidly deteriorated.

Am particularly saddened to hear of the circumstances surrounding his untimely end.