 Purred: Tue May 8, '12 8:25pm PST |
 | |  | | This is Delyte's person. He doesn't know I am talking about this. He is 17, has hyperthyroid disease and very bad kidneys. He is very thin, has arthritis in his hips and has very bad cataracts. One would think he was blind, but he can track any bit of food thrown anywhere and any kind of prey. Lately he has taken to pulling out his fur and groaning in his sleep. BUT he still enjoys eating almost anything, cat food or human food, will stand on his hind legs and dance around for his favorites, can leap four feet up and over the coffee table just because he feels like it, and enjoys laying in the sunshine and sleeping with me on the sofa or on the bed at night. As Alexander says, you will see the light go out of their eyes when it is time to go. Usually, with a cat with kidney disease--and almost all old cats have kidney failure as they are not built to last this long--they stop eating and become obsessed with drinking water. The very last phase, they cannot drink but want to and seek out water sources. You do not want to let it go that far. Most old cats are in some level of pain, I suspect. I cannot give Delyte any of the conventional medications because he had major surgery on his intestines 7 years ago and his gut is extraordinarily sensitive and also narrow, so all medications irritate him. He is getting his thyroid meds rubbed on his ears, and anything else will have to be injected. When his pain becomes so bad that he does not want to leap around or move or eat or play, then it will be the time.
He has a vet appt on Friday to have his condition reassessed, and we don't want him to be upset in advance. He is starting to have the chemical smell that cats [and people] with minimal kidney function have, and there is not much that can be done for that. He will probably get some fluids at the vet, and some blood work done. His teeth are very bad but he is too old, thin and poorly functioning to be anesthesized for anything. So I just have to keep watching that he is eating and using the pan and enjoying his life as much as he can as an old stiff kitty.
You don't necessarily need to go by a cat's age, after all. There are a lot of kitties on here who are older than 16-17, and sadly some who have gone to the Bridge long before that age. So just keep watching. Best wishes to you and Delyte would send giant purrs if he knew this message was going out.  |  |  | |  |
|
| my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become friends | [notify] |
6
