Saying Goodbye Never Gets Easier

This is Calli, our first cat.

 

 

This is the last photo I have of us together, taken just days ago.

We got Calli before we bought our home. She was the coolest, most bad-ass cat ever.
She was a lap-cat, a cuddler, snuggler, and a kisser.
She didn’t like many people, but those she liked knew it.
She was….

She was Calli.
And we had to say goodbye yesterday.

Calli got sick.
She lost a lot of weight, was jaundiced, had pancreatitis, and possibly hepatic lipidosis (unconfirmed, but likely).
We tried.

Painkiller, antibiotic, anti-nausea, appetite stimulant…
We syringe-fed her food and water.
She wouldn’t eat on her own.
She barely drank on her own.

We had 4 options:
1) Nasal-esophageal feeding tube
2) Hooking her up to and I.V. (w/hospitalization) for nutritional supplementation
3) Continue force-feeding her
4) Euthanasia

After everything we went through with Peanut, we knew that Calli would not do well with a tube, and the chance of successful treatment with 1 & 2 was very low. 
We didn’t want her to suffer. If we tried to continue feeding her by hand, she would, most likely, slowly starve to death and die at home.

I could not let her go through that.
And I couldn’t put my husband through waking up to find her body.
I don’t know that i could handle that, either.

Letting her go was the most humane thing we could do for her.
And it was the most painful thing for us.

It’s the first morning without her.
And it’s obvious.

And it sucks.