We had the same thing a few months back with one of our cats and here's what we did. Gave the cat to an aquaintance. Once the kids noticed (next day!)we told them that he had gone to live with a friend because she really needed a good cat like him, but that we could visit any time they wanted. After a couple of times of stalling, we then did go visit him. Go figure, the new owner was allergic so we took him back after a few weeks. Wife put him on kijiji, found a new owner, and we asked that person if we could come visit once in a while. New owner said that was fine (who would deprive a kid!). We actually lost her contact info in the meantime, but the kids don't bring it up too often about going to visit (once every couple of weeks?) and when they do my wife is pretty good at distracting them. We do give the kids "updates" every once in a while about how much patches loves his new home. It has gone far better than we would have guessed, because they know they can go visit...and we would have done it by now had we not lost her info!