Caution…another cat blog entry.

Our long goodbye with Toby, our 15-year old orange and white cat rescued when he was just a couple of weeks old, is coming to an end.

We’ve always believed in providing good veterinary care for our cats as long as they still have that spark of life. But when soldiering on obviously gets to be a burden for them, we don’t believe in prolonging their lives for our own sake.

And now, on our return from six days on the mainland, despite excellent medical care during our brief absence, Toby is clearly at that point.

For us, these endings are always very sad. But the worst is when you have to decide whether or not to intervene and provide a painless exit. Today there’s no more uncertainty, and in some ways that’s a relief.

Actually, last Sunday, the day before we were scheduled to leave on this trip for Meda’s major professional association meeting of the year, I was worried. I had to struggle to get Toby to eat, offering tempting food by hand, and trying different treats a number of times over several hours until he managed to eat enough to get by.

I thought that perhaps the time for us to make the decision had come. I toyed with trying to squeeze an appointment with our vet sometime during the day of our departure, and letting Toby go before the trip. But then he perked up just enough to eat a little more, and by Monday morning it seemed like he was back on an even keel.

Since we could count on our cat sitter to provide the best possible care, with backup from our regular vet, it felt like a mistake to rush to judgement. So our last minute call was to proceed with the trip as scheduled, and hope that Toby would continue to hold his own.

Instead, it seems, he continued to slide downhill. A couple of okay days, but otherwise sliding down. He took a mid-week trip to the vet, and some adjustments were made, but none that reversed the slide.

Now we have to arrange for him to exit gracefully and without further suffering. That’s my early morning job. It’s complicated because this is our regular vet’s scheduled day off, so working out the human logistics of this is a little trickier than it might otherwise be.

In the meantime, here are a few photos taken during Toby’s early days with us back in the end of 2002. What happy memories!