Then time passed. Amazingly, I’ve spent more time here on The Straight Dope than any other place on the internet. Fucking YEARS. Almost decades with an ‘s’! Time passed and I hardly noticed. And then. . . Plunket got sick. He lost a lot of weight and almost died-- until he was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. We almost lost him but with medication and loving attention, he pulled through.
And then another year and a half passed and Plunket got sick again. We, as a family, were too selfish to realize that 20 was just about enough for a cat. We thought if we cared enough we could, I don’t know, let him live to 25 or even older. It is to our eternal shame that Plunket died struggling to get out of his litter box. He just couldn’t do it. My husband lifted him from his half-way struggle and that was that.
But that wasn’t the end of our (O.K., “my”) cat delusion. I figured we had at least 3 years left with Camry seeing as how he was never sick a day in his life and he was a grown-assed kitten for forever. However, two months after Plunket died, we noticed that Camry lost a ton of weight and he just. . . stopped eating. Like, almost instantaneously. We rushed him to the vet. The verdict: liver AND kidney failure. We were told he wasn’t in any great pain and that all we could do for him were ‘comfort measures’. So he got water through a syringe until he died peacefully in his sleep just a few days before Christmas.
So why am I posting in MPSIMS after YEARS of not even coming into this forum? Because I felt the need to-- I don’t know-- unload? This seemed the place to do it. So many years of gathering and holding on to the comfort of things that you think will last forever.
I’m not very sad. It was time for them both. I hope The Dope lasts a whole lot longer, but who knows?
I lost my 18-yr old Siamese, Papi. I also had 17-yr old Sabrina (another Siamese), who Papi never liked, and I think the feeling was mutual. I thought, if anything, Sabrina would be happy not to have Papi around hissing at her. But just 3 months later, Sabrina was gone, too.
I’m sorry for your loss. I haven’t gotten another Siamese for the house. With the dogs (who are actually pretty good with cats) I haven’t thought it was fair to the cat.
I lost my 16 year old girl about 5 months ago. At one time I had four kitties, now I just have the one girl left - 14 and developing kidney disease. I honestly dread the thought of coming home one day to a house devoid of the furry creatures.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I lost my little 13-year-old Russian Blue girl a few days before Christmas, of kidney failure. She seemed fine until she wasn’t. We agonized over whether to let her go or keep trying to keep her going. It’s never easy. I’m sure you made the right choice.
Kitty is 19 and has kidney disease. She is slowly getting worse, but still feels well and eats. I will continue to tend to her needs and blow lots of money for as long I can keep holding her purring in my lap.
We’ve all been through this so many times, and it never gets easier. I still mourn my beloved Paris, whom I lost last year at 16. I miss him every single day. His sister is 13, and hasn’t been sick a day in her life. I cherish her, but know her day will come as well.
We had two kitties pass recently as well. The first was Bixby, who we got got in the summer of 2004. He’d been sick for a while, he had a small spot in one eye that grew in about a week to blind him in that eye, he was doing ok as a one-eyed cat, but eventually just got sicker and sicker until he passed peacefully on Christmas.
The other was Blinkin, who my wife had for years before we met, probably in the late 90’s. Never really sick a day in his life, he just started getting old. He slowed down, liked to spend a lot more time in a bed on the radiator. We started going on weekend trips to PA, and decided to bring him along rather than leave him with the other cats, he claimed a nice spot on the couch and just hung out with us. Eventually, he too stopped eating and drinking, as it was his time.