Goodbye to my cat

So yesterday when Lorin came home from work our cat(named Ringo but we never called himthat) was upstairs meowing but not like he normally does. So when we go up to check on him he's purring away but making a strange meow at us. He drags himself over to Lorin and thats when we knew something was wrong. Lorin freaks a bit and we take him off to the vet. When we get there they check him out and something is definitely wrong. He has no feeling or bloodflow in his back area. Assuming that he got hurt somehow(don't know how he could have possibly done that) they take some xrays. Well from the xrays the vet could see there was severe deterioration in his spine, which could have happened over time and him simply jumping down from the bed could have severed his nerves in that area. Well there were not a whole lot of options from that point. For sure he would never use his back legs again and if after surgery they could not resume bloodflow to his rear than he would die a most painful death. So we opted to do the most humane but sad thing we could do. We had to put him down. We are so very torn up about it. He was a member of our family not just a pet(even though he was a cat). Our two dogs have been in a bit of a slump as well. I think they miss him too! As for Lorin and I we buried him yesterday afternoon and we spent the rest of the evening crying and reminiscing about all the crazy shit he would do. We would even expect for him to do his lovey dovey stuff to us as soon as we sat on the couch. But...he wasn't there. So today is another day for us and I know the healing process is time. Eventually we will be ok with his death but for now its a sad time in our little family.