I finally understand about the agony of when it’s time to let a pet go. I don’t know whether we’re there quite yet. My wife is not willing to make the call yet (or at least she wasn’t last night), so for understandable reasons it’s not something I’ll do unilaterally. But I suspect it’s coming, probably this week. Our cat, Precious, is almost 18 years old, which the chart at the vet's office says is the equivalent to 88 for a person. She had a few unscheduled vet visits in April for a UTI, which seemed to go away with medication, but now in the past few days she is just no longer herself—lethargic, not interested in food, and then last night her balance started to seem unsteady. Since we’ve had her, she almost always hears me upstairs in the morning and eagerly comes over to the bottom of the stairs to wait for me to come down and feed her, but for the past few days she hasn’t done that either. We relocated her litterbox to a location close to where she’s been spending all her time and that proved to be a good move—she’s drinking a lot of water and then peeing a lot. The vet and the animal hospital can’t find anything in particular that’s wrong. On Thursday the vet gave her a steroid that was supposed to help perk her up and it doesn’t seem to have had much, if any, effect. The appetite stimulants aren’t helping either. I told my wife that I think the thing that would absolutely make me say "it’s time" is if the cat can no longer jump up onto the couch, which is where she is now. That’s not to say I might not conclude that way otherwise if I think she’s in pain. But that would be the single biggest indicator. As I type this, she’s sleeping on top of one of the cushions on the back of the living room couch.
I’ve never had to deal with this before because the only pet I had growing up was a Guinea pig I got from a friend when I was in second grade. My brother turned out to have an allergy and we had to give it away to friends in Reston. My wife hasn’t had any pets since she was a kid either. So while intellectually I understood the various posts, usually from dog owners, about how difficult it is to know whether it’s time and then to make that decision, I don’t think I understood it emotionally. I sure do now. This is brutal.
Sorry if I am rambling a bit. I feel like an emotional wreck to a degree I haven’t felt since my father died almost six years ago, and the big difference there is that with him it was a question of waiting until nature did its thing whereas this time WE have a decision to make. I slept as poorly last night as I have in a long time. And I have to find some way to get work done today.
