Missing Tyke Luther

Monday was an extremely sad day in our house as we had to make a very heart-wrenching decision concerning our 13 year old cat Tyke. About two weeks ago, Tyke (who is strictly an indoor cat) was accidentally left outside our house for a few hours...when Shane discovered him later that night he had been viciously attacked by a stray cat in the neighborhood. This particular cat had been born a stray, was never around human contact, and was wild. Tyke had deep puncture wounds to his neck and we weren't sure he was going to recover. After a few days of not eating or even moving, it looked like Tyke was beginning to perk up. He was still only eating about once a day and had lost a lot of weight, but at least he was moving around a little bit. Then, two weeks later,(on Sunday night) as Jack went to lovingly pet Tyke on the head I saw our normally "wouldn't hurt a fly" cat hiss and spit at Jack. He was doing it in such a way that it really scared me. He was very aggressive and ended up lunging for Jack's hands. I have seen him get annoyed with Jack in the past, but it took A LOT of petting, poking, and tail-pulling from Jack to anger Tyke. Later that same night, I noticed Tyke becoming extremely aggressive towards our other cat for no reason....then I really became concerned. Shane and I thought there was a chance that Tyke had been infected with rabies. After an appointment with the vet, we all came to the conclusion that for the safety of our family (especially Jack) that our only option was to have Tyke euthanized and immediately checked for rabies. If he turned up positive for the virus then we would all probably have gotten treatments right away. I received good news and bad news today: the good news is that Tyke did not have rabies and the bad news is that Tyke didn't have to be put to sleep. I feel such horrible guilt for having to euthanize a pet who has been in our lives for 13 years and who turned out to not be sick after all. Shane and I were 16 and 17 years old when we found him on a deserted back road and Shane took him home. He was sweet and gentle and sometimes a humongous pain in the rear, but we will miss him so much. I blame a lot of this on our stupidity for not getting him a rabies vaccination, but since he was always indoors we slacked off on getting him his shots. Let this be a lesson to everyone to get your animals their shots...it would have saved us a lot of pain and Tyke would still be with us.