Yes, another cat end-of-life question

Post date: 2021-12-07 07:44:32

My beloved senior kitty is dealing with kidney failure on top of a host of other issues. It's probably time, but I need advice.

Laney is somewhere between 15 and 16 years old, and she's got failing kidneys, Diabetes, arthritis, a heart murmur and has been going downhill since a major UTI sent her to the animal hospital for two nights in October.

She's showing less and less interest in food, and is having trouble getting to and into the litter box -- and possibly not even knowing she needs to get to the litter box. The past four or five days she's had "out of the box" incidents. I can deal with the cleanup and laundry, but the underlying cause is that she's clearly declining.

She seems to struggle to get up sometimes, other times she seems more or less OK if a bit shaky. She doesn't swish her tail anymore or purr like she used to. She has largely even stopped swatting at my other bedroom cat, Lilah, which she's always wanted to do if Lilah was getting attention.

But she still expresses interest in getting attention. She still has light in her eyes, and I'm really struggling to make the call to put that out. Even more, I'm struggling to plan for this -- it feels wrong. What if she rebounds the day of? How do I function knowing this is coming? Doesn't she deserve every day she can get, as long as she's not suffering?

Her vet is coming tomorrow. (I have a mobile vet for the cats who, sadly, is closing her practice at the end of the year.)

Obviously I'll discuss this with my vet tomorrow, but I guess I'm looking for advice on how to make this decision and logistics. I've never had to make the decision to euthanize a pet before. We lost a younger cat a few years ago to FIP but that was a clear cut call that really sucked, but was an obvious decision.

Cat tax from when she was 11, and more recently.

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