Farewell, FatCat

Today, FatCat was put to sleep.

Over the last couple of months she’d slowly been going downhill – not eating as much, not keeping food down, losing weight, blood in the poo, and a bundle of other things.  I’d initially put it down to a change of diet (for whatever reason, I hadn’t been able to get their usual food, so I’d been changing things and giving them whatever was available) but she should’ve got used to the changed food in that time.

She’s never been in pain, and I’ve kept a close eye on that as well as everything else, but I’ve been aware she’s doing less well.

This week, though, she took a bigger downward turn – more lost weight, worse poo and so on – and the really significant thing for me is that she was a lot more cuddly, and was actually choosing to sit on me or against me most of the time.  That was absolutely new behaviour – she normally avoided that sort of contact like the plague – and definitely not a positive sign.

As the week went on, things didn’t improve, so I made the appointment with the vets.  And today, we went in. She didn’t even fight going into the cat carrier, so she knew things weren’t good.

I’ve always known that this was how it would work out – she’s antisocial enough that even taking her to the vets for an examination would’ve led to her not trusting me as much for [x] weeks, if not months. (It usually takes her about two to four weeks to recover trust of me after I’ve applied anti-flea stuff to her, so God knows how long it’d take after a vet visit)  Similarly, traumatising her daily in order to get meds into her would’ve utterly knackered her quality of life, so it was always likely that this was how it would all work out.   (The same is true for the Bengal, so that’s something to look forward to…)

The vets themselves were really good – the entire process has obviously changed in the current Lockdown, but it was all done as well as humanly possible.

As it is, I still feel like an absolute shitbag. I know it was the right thing to do, I know she wasn’t well and that this was the best (indeed, the only) way to do things that kept her life as good as possible.  I know she wasn’t in pain, I know she had a really good eight years here with me, and I know the end wasn’t a vile experience.   But I still hate being the one to make that life or death decision, it just doesn’t sit well with me.

I’m going to see now how the Bengal – a change-averse little twat at the best of times – handles things, as she’s never been a solo cat before. She’ll either do fine and accept it, or she’ll be a nightmare for a while.

All told, a shitty, shitty day.