vituperation

It looks like Spot isn’t going to make it. He’s got some pretty serious issues with his kidneys, his pancreas, and his thyroid. We found this out a couple of weeks ago when I took him to the vet out of concern for his weight loss. We thought he was doing better on all the meds and special food, but he’s stopped eating now, and I just weighed him.

He weighs six pounds, five ounces — down over a pound in the two weeks since he got weighed at the vet.

I’m afraid it’s time to let him go, and I sure don’t want to. He’s been with me longer than my wife has.

He was a stray who showed up at my back door as a tweener-cat (not a kitten, not an adult) back in 1994. It took me a week of sweet-talking before he’d let me touch him the first time…and the first thing I did was snatch him up and get him to the vet.

He’s been far and away our most skittish kitty, choosing for his first 10 years to stay almost completely out of sight. Over the last few years, though, he really came out of his shell. He wasn’t personable, but he wanted to be more visible and like part of the family. He’s been a good boy.

Do you ever feel like life tries to pile as much as it can on you to see if you’ll break? First Spot, then the dog when we thought Spot was getting better, and now Spot again. I’ve never had to put down an animal I’ve had so long, and I’m terrified for him (and me).

In a perfect world, the vet would look at him and say, “oh, he just needs this,” but I don’t expect him to. When he diagnosed all the problems above, he wasn’t too optimistic about Spot bouncing back. We sure had hoped, though.

And, in the strange sort of circumstance that seems to plague my life, tomorrow marks four years to the day that Tubby died from complications from his diabetes.

Here he is just now. He’s been drinking some water with tuna in it (but not eating the tuna). If you look closely, you can see a tuna strand on his lower lip.

I’ll try to post or comment tomorrow with what the vet says, but I don’t expect it to be happy news.