My cat disappeared on Halloween night. She is/was not a black cat, and she was too skittish for any stranger to be able to pick her up.
She wanted to go out. I didn't want to let her, but there wasn't any trick-or-treat activity happening on my block (been that way for the last several years), and she had been sleeping outside for the night for several nights previous, like she was just enjoying the last of the good weather. So, I let her out.
Went back to the back door 10 minutes later, to see if she wanted to come back in. She wasn't there. I felt uncomfortable about it, but I needed to get to sleep, and I figured she'd be at the door, wanting in when I got up in the morning, like always.
But, that is not what happened. She never returned. 
I did all the things the lost pet web sites say to do, including an intense house to house search of homes/yards/garages/sheds, etc, but did not find her. I finally got desperate enough to hire a man who uses dogs to search for missing people and missing pets.
The dogs tracked my cat over one mile north of my house. The signals the dogs gave to their handler were that my cat died or was picked up by a predator at a corner in that area. I put up posters, and handed out fliers to the people living in the area, just in the tiny hope that the dogs were wrong, or that my cat had been picked up by a person. But, no luck. And, yes, I've checked the County animal shelter, including DOA reports, I've visited the Humane Society, etc.
My cat is just gone....and I too fell lost and broken. I've had cats since I was small, and have loved them all, but this last one touched my heart more than any cat I've ever had. My home is so empty and quiet with out her, and I didn't even get to do a loving burial for her or even know for sure what happened. I don't have words to describe how desolate and heartsick I feel.
My cousin called me, and we talked. Unlike my family, she seems to understand what I am going through. She too had a cat that was deeply loved and special to her. Some of our pets just really reach us, and we develop an incredibly deep bond with them. Losing a fur kid that we have connected to so strongly is achingly hard.
My cousin pointed out that when we are grieving it is too easy to be hard on ourselves, to second guess our decisions, to think that if we'd done something different that we would not have lost our beloved fur kid. I am also not convinced that we are supposed to 'learn' something from these kinds of painful experiences. To me, a deity who treated us like that would more deserve to be spat upon than worshiped.
I guess what is hard to accept is that our friends die when their bodies wear out. The hardest part about keeping pets is that their bodies usually wear out sooner than ours do. I know that even though there are many wonderful animals that need a home, I am just not ready to take on another pet right now.
I need to honor my cat by grieving fully for her loss, and hoping that I can express to her spirit how much I love her, how horribly I miss her, and how much I value and honor the love she gave me when she was here.
In the mean time, my heart goes out to you. 
I know painfully, all too well, just how miserable it feels, that emptiness where our beloved friends should be. I can't stop crying, either. I had to stuff my emotions in order to work, and my house was broken into one week after my cat disappeared.
Most of my life, I have loved the fall season, but I know I will have trouble enjoying it in the future, because I will always remember this time as the time when the cat I've love the most, disappeared.
I'm sure you've heard that grieving is a process, and we all have our own way of doing it. It really takes time, and when we have deeply loved someone (and, yeah, pets are family to me), then we can't be expected to just turn off the feelings. I read somewhere that it can take 3 years to process the loss of someone that we loved deeply. Try to be as gentle with yourself as possible, while you grieve the loss of your most beloved friend. 
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