- Joined
- Sep 26, 2021
- Messages
- 3
- Purraise
- 4
First time posting on this site - I just really needed help.
It has been almost 5 weeks without Smores and I am not doing well. Smores was a stray cat that we adopted (or she adopted us) 8 years ago when she began hanging out outside our home. We have two other cats. The vet thought Smores was about 8 - she had already lost a lot of her teeth, so the vet was not 100% sure of her age. She was the calmest, friendliest, most loving cat - acting as a mediator for the other two and greeting (headbutting) every person that came inside our home.
Smores started to decline a couple of years ago. She lost a lot of weight and her eating habits became very irregular. We had to have a number of her other teeth removed, and she has several bouts of urinary tract infections. Over the last few months, she started declining more rapidly. We gave her so much of the food that she used to love and she would only sometimes eat it - tuna, as many treats as she wanted, chicken that we would hand feed to her. She would only drink from a glass cup that we left on our kitchen table. She also seemed confused and unsettled - she had a hard time getting comfortable and resting and would pace back and forth and make sort of confused meows at us. She would fall or stumble sometimes when she jumped, and she did not groom as much as she used to. We used wipes to assist with the cleaning. She also started peeing on us and had trouble defecating. The vet could not really find anything wrong with her numbers, and just suspected she was just getting old - although we never did any more advanced testing, like for cancer or something.
My partner is the main caregiver (spending all day with her) for Smores and loves her immensely. She believed that Smores was suffering and needed to be put to sleep as the last act of love that we could show her. We had a cat in 2013 that we waited too long with and she died in our home - which was a terrible, terrible process. I agreed to this outcome and 4 days later Smores left our family. I honestly have so many doubts and regrets and I am having a very hard time letting go. She still spent time with the family on the couch as we watched tv. She would still occasionally play on the scratching pad and she did seem to eat well sometimes. She still loved her siblings and the catnip parties we had. There are just so many what ifs - would she have bounced back if we waited? Should we have bought her diapers and talked to the vet again for other medicine options or testing? Would a liquid diet have helped, or closing her in a small room? What about vitamin or appetite supplements? Would she have been better once the weather became less humid?
When we went for the procedure, the vet used a mask with gas in the beginning and Smores fought against it. Was she fighting to come home? Was she content with our decision and at peace? Was she happy with the life she had? It is so hard not to ever know. I have cried every day since and I think I need counseling. Thanks for listening...
It has been almost 5 weeks without Smores and I am not doing well. Smores was a stray cat that we adopted (or she adopted us) 8 years ago when she began hanging out outside our home. We have two other cats. The vet thought Smores was about 8 - she had already lost a lot of her teeth, so the vet was not 100% sure of her age. She was the calmest, friendliest, most loving cat - acting as a mediator for the other two and greeting (headbutting) every person that came inside our home.
Smores started to decline a couple of years ago. She lost a lot of weight and her eating habits became very irregular. We had to have a number of her other teeth removed, and she has several bouts of urinary tract infections. Over the last few months, she started declining more rapidly. We gave her so much of the food that she used to love and she would only sometimes eat it - tuna, as many treats as she wanted, chicken that we would hand feed to her. She would only drink from a glass cup that we left on our kitchen table. She also seemed confused and unsettled - she had a hard time getting comfortable and resting and would pace back and forth and make sort of confused meows at us. She would fall or stumble sometimes when she jumped, and she did not groom as much as she used to. We used wipes to assist with the cleaning. She also started peeing on us and had trouble defecating. The vet could not really find anything wrong with her numbers, and just suspected she was just getting old - although we never did any more advanced testing, like for cancer or something.
My partner is the main caregiver (spending all day with her) for Smores and loves her immensely. She believed that Smores was suffering and needed to be put to sleep as the last act of love that we could show her. We had a cat in 2013 that we waited too long with and she died in our home - which was a terrible, terrible process. I agreed to this outcome and 4 days later Smores left our family. I honestly have so many doubts and regrets and I am having a very hard time letting go. She still spent time with the family on the couch as we watched tv. She would still occasionally play on the scratching pad and she did seem to eat well sometimes. She still loved her siblings and the catnip parties we had. There are just so many what ifs - would she have bounced back if we waited? Should we have bought her diapers and talked to the vet again for other medicine options or testing? Would a liquid diet have helped, or closing her in a small room? What about vitamin or appetite supplements? Would she have been better once the weather became less humid?
When we went for the procedure, the vet used a mask with gas in the beginning and Smores fought against it. Was she fighting to come home? Was she content with our decision and at peace? Was she happy with the life she had? It is so hard not to ever know. I have cried every day since and I think I need counseling. Thanks for listening...