fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2011-01-17 12:21 pm
some_stars) wrote2011-01-17 12:21 pm
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I just made a vet appointment for Saturday to find out whether it's time to have our older cat put down, and if they say yes we're probably just going to do it right then, so now I'm kind of a mess. She's 16--we got her to replace the last cat we had to put down(we've gone through a lot of cats, but mostly they just run away or vanish; this one ate poison and we had to take her in), the winter after I turned 10, so I've always been able to remember her age. A few years ago, she suddenly lost a huge amount of weight and more kept slowly melting off, but the vets couldn't find anything wrong with her despite endless tests and trying her on about ten different kinds of special food, and--up until about six weeks ago--she kept on catching birds and rats, and wandering the neighborhood and being her usual bitchy, pushy self.
Now suddenly--very suddenly, like since early/mid-December--she's much slower, she's missing jumps more often than she makes them, and she peed on herself (and the bed) while she was sleeping the other day and didn't seem to notice. Also, for the first time in over ten years, since she had her nervous breakdown after we moved house twice in one year and her personality flipped, she's being sweet and sitting on people's laps and letting us hold her.
The thing is, if there's something acute wrong with her, my parents won't be willing to treat it--which is fair, because she's quite old and spending thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on a cat, especially when I'm racking up those kind of costs myself for my own uninsured medical expenses, isn't something I think anyone's morally required to do unless they're a billionaire or something. And she's not the kind of cat you can comfort, like if you have to give her pills or shots every day and take her to the vet constantly--she just gets stressed out, and being touched or talked to doesn't help her at all. Nothing we do affects her mood much at all, really. (I'm assuming the abrupt upsurge in cuddling and closeness isn't a change of heart so much as a sign of imminent organ failure.)
So there's not really going to be any good news--if they say she's not in pain yet, we'll take her home, but even if it's not this Saturday it's clearly going to be soon, and I thought I was ready because I had to start thinking about this years ago, when she lost the weight, but I'm really really not.
Now suddenly--very suddenly, like since early/mid-December--she's much slower, she's missing jumps more often than she makes them, and she peed on herself (and the bed) while she was sleeping the other day and didn't seem to notice. Also, for the first time in over ten years, since she had her nervous breakdown after we moved house twice in one year and her personality flipped, she's being sweet and sitting on people's laps and letting us hold her.
The thing is, if there's something acute wrong with her, my parents won't be willing to treat it--which is fair, because she's quite old and spending thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on a cat, especially when I'm racking up those kind of costs myself for my own uninsured medical expenses, isn't something I think anyone's morally required to do unless they're a billionaire or something. And she's not the kind of cat you can comfort, like if you have to give her pills or shots every day and take her to the vet constantly--she just gets stressed out, and being touched or talked to doesn't help her at all. Nothing we do affects her mood much at all, really. (I'm assuming the abrupt upsurge in cuddling and closeness isn't a change of heart so much as a sign of imminent organ failure.)
So there's not really going to be any good news--if they say she's not in pain yet, we'll take her home, but even if it's not this Saturday it's clearly going to be soon, and I thought I was ready because I had to start thinking about this years ago, when she lost the weight, but I'm really really not.
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