Goodbye Midnight

We had Midnight, my cat of 17+ years, put to sleep yesterday. On monday night, I noticed she wasn't doing so well. She wasn't really eating, walking around very little, and basically just laying in dark corners. We'd noticed some other signs in the preceding days, and I kinda got scared. She weighed next to nothing (5 pounds, I'm told, which is down 2 from her usual 7 pounds).

So we took her in to the vet first thing tuesday morning, and left her there to run some tests and see what's going on. To be honest, I was surprised that she was still with us tuesday morning. That's how bad she seemed to me. Heck, when we got to the vet, I wouldn't have been surprised to find her passed away in the cat carrier.

They tell us they gave her IV water and glucose, as she was dehydrated (I tried to get her to drink, to no avail). We waited all day for the vet to call us with some news or results, but they never did, which kinda pissed us off. We finally got a hold of a night-shift vet at the hospital, who told us what the chart seemed to indicate: kidney failure, as well as liver failure. Both of those basically lead to the cat not eating or drinking.

Wednesday we finally talked to the doctor in charge of midnight, and the prognosis was pretty much what we figured. It's not like you can cure liver and kidney failure. To extend her life, we could do an IV therapy and see if that kick starts the kidney again (chances not good), as well as take her home and do months (or weeks) of subcutaneous fluids. I did that for one of Val's cats a few years ago, and it was no fun for the cat or us, and the cat just wasted away slowly anyway. I didn't want to put midnight through any of that.

In addition, we could try to force-feed her to see if the liver comes back. Chances there are equally slim. Also, she's had irritable bowel disease all her life, meaning that anytime she eats more than a few bites, she generally throws it all back up. So force-feeding combined with that didn't sound the least bit appealing.

Plus we didn't want her to hate us the last part of her life, constantly being force-fed and needles for subcutaneous fluids stuck in her. I've done some of that when she was younger (she had an episode of diabetes, so I had to give her insulin shots every day), and everyone's given medicine to a pet, i.e. shoving a pill or dropper down her throat. Anyone who's done that knows that the pet learns very quickly what's coming and generally disapproves, to say the least. I didn't want to have to do that to her in her last days.

Also, consider that midnight always hated other cats and dogs (darn prima donna..), and now she was stuck in a noisy animal hospital. I didn't really want to leave her there either, nor could I really bring her home to let her "waste away" at home. That ain't right, either.

So with a VERY heavy heart, we had a neighbor drive us to the vet (neither sara nor I figured we'd be in any shape to drive home afterwards), and had her put to sleep.

I know it was the best thing to do, but it still breaks my heart. I've had midnight for a very long time. You kinda grow attached. I'll miss her.