Saturday, June 16, 2018

A Sad Good-Bye

Two years ago, our cat Sukkie nearly died from kidney disease. With some amazing help from our veterinarian and a lot of love and patience, we managed to keep her alive and reasonably happy, though annoyed at us for the frequent hydration treatments that took three of us to administer. But ultimately, her age and the disease were too much, and today we had to say good-bye.

Sukkie was doing fairly well until the winter, when she was finding it very difficult to stay warm, and being very picky about food. She lost a lot of weight, and the vet said that we might as well feed her whatever she wanted to eat, because keeping her happy was probably more important than controlling her diet.

That worked for her for a couple of months, and she got quite excited by her new diet of rotisserie chicken, roast beef, cottage cheese, turkey, and cream cheese, with some cat food thrown in.

But this month she took to hiding out on the rim of the bathroom sink, then on the counter next to the kitchen sink, and then in the kitchen sink. She wasn't nearly as interested in cuddling, and seemed to want to avoid a lot of stimulation. Yesterday, she vomited, and then just stopped eating. I think she was trying to tell us that she was ready to go.

The vet came to our house, and the four of us were present when she died. It was as peaceful as I would have expected from Sukkie, who fought through all of the two years of her disease. We all miss her very much.

This will be, for awhile, the first time our family has been without pets since 2003, when our dog Jenny got struck and killed by a car. It will take some getting used to, but it will probably be a bit longer this time before we take on another pet. We're glad to have given Sukkie a second chance, but it's been a long two years.