Quatloos!

I had to put one of my cats down this morning. She had had hyperthyroidism for some time, but had been lethargic for a couple months. Her latest blood tests, earlier this week, came up positive for pancreas and kidney problems, although the thyroid enzyme level was properly controlled.

Just too many things wrong. She had a good run, though -- 16 years, about 5 with us.

Sorry for your loss. Animals are better people than people are.

I hate it every time I lose a cat, swear I will not do it again - and then go out and get one. My longest was Mischief who we rescued after her feral mother dropped her in our yard; her 20 years with us will probably never be equaled. I am sorry for your loss.

webhick wrote:Sorry for your loss. Animals are better people than people are.

Without a doubt, it's a tragedy they can't stay with us longer.

It's been a bit more than a year since I had to have our beloved Turkish Van, Shoonra, euthanized. He was a true rescue cat, found - a tiny little thing, shivering in a freezing rain on a island in the Interstate by one of my wife's co-workers who put him in a cardbox box and took him to work to see if anyone would give him a home. He was in appalling condition: Not merely small, but emaciated, not a speck of fat on him, nor any fur - just a sort of peach fuzz, you could see every bone and muscle, you could see his little heart beating, and he had been scratched up - either beaten up by other cats or going through brambles, and he had mites and a sort of wheeze, and very weak - too weak even to meow. Everyone at work looked at him in the box and many opined that he would not last the night. My wife called me about adopting him and I realized that if I said No that by this time the next day he'd be drinking out of God's toilet bowl, so I said "Sure we'll take him. And unlike our previous pets, we'll spoil this one." (If you knew us, you'd realize the last sentence was a joke.)
She picked me up at the subway station with the box in the back seat and I carried him into our house - the last minute he ever felt real hunger. We put down a plate with the contents of a can of tuna - he inhaled it and looked up at us, so we put down another canful and he finished that just as quickly and looked up at us - so we did it a third time. This he also finished off and wobbled off to the livingroom - we thought he might barf it all up on our shag carpet but instead he found himself a safe spot under our table and fell asleep. Two hours later he was back in the kitchen at the plate giving us the look and getting three more canfuls of tuna ... and this sort of thing kept up for weeks.
We had thought, from his size, he was a mere kitten but the vet's x-rays showed bone development for approx 18 months of age, so maybe he wandered off as a kitten and never got a real meal since then. Gradually he got longer and longer, then taller and taller, and finally wider and wider. His fur grew in like fleece. He developed real muscles, and a real meow, and a deep purr. And he ran our house for 14 years. Unfortunately my sister-in-law kept thinking she could win his affection by sneaking him cat treats and he became so obese he couldn't walk right or breathe right and weighed 35 pounds (he was about 20 pounds at his prime), and was clearly in constant discomfort.

We do our best for our little furballs and we miss them terribly, as if they were our children.

Sorry to hear of your loss.

It reminds me of a quote from Joseph Conrad:

“I’ve done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it if I choose for an everlasting rest in the dustbin of progress, amongst all the sweepings and, figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilisation” (96.6-9).
http://www.josephconradsociety.org/conr ... rancis.htm

All die when their time comes. This is the law of the universe.