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thanks toonie! what happened to your pet?
My Yukon had been suffering from undetected feline diabetes,he hid it well, the symptoms were not very pronounced, he had lost some weight but was still a big cat at 17 lbs. He always ate lots, he always was hungry, he was such a lover of food..we all knew him to be like this, he would even wolf down popcorn, one vet had joked he was a great cat to have at a party! Then he lost his life long buddy, and he went into a silent depression, I now see what he was going through but I was grieving myself and tended to go lose myself outside, he was mostly indoors as that is where he liked to be. I thought it best not to cry in front of him so I avoided being near him and I guess he was doing the same, we stayed away from each other. I wondered if he wasn't mad at me, but I let it be, I felt unable to be concerned because all my life I had preferred Yukon and I was feeling guilty about Felix's little heart. Ten days after Felix died,to my great shock, Yukon crashed completely, his hind legs failed him and he walked like he was really drunk, we realized he was partially blind at times too, he was terribly sick and just wanted to crawl and lie in under the stairs in the basement, the same place his brother had been going to during his last days. I will always regret having spirited Felix away without leaving Yukon see his life companion's body, he wouldn't have worried about and looked for him all that time. It broke my heart to realize that despite his sickness he was still searching for his Felix. He was put on oral medications to lower his blood sugar and he also got insulin shots once a day at the vets for four days. I think that on that fourth day he picked up some. But the weekend came and we started him on just oral meds. I think the insulin would have perhaps helped him, but having to force feed him oral meds twice a day made me wonder how we both would feel about the needles. He also had to change his diet, in order to slowly lose weight, he was still asking for food a lot, his only pleasure would have to be limited too, how could he understand this? We could no longer keep his litter in the basement, had it on the first floor and he would trail little bits of little all over, some in the family complained about this, we had never had to put up with that before. Then there was his future to consider: His teeth needed cleaning and some would have had to be removed. Would he have been okay with this? But worst of all, I wondered how he would recover well when he was missing Felix terribly, he would for a long time, Yukon was such a loving cat, he loved his whole family so much, you could tell when he laid eyes on a member of the family how sweetly he looked at them. I wondered if with all his problems he was up to recover, he had just turned 14. I wondered how he would cope with our work keeping us outside for the better part of the year, all alone in the house, if his good years were not already all gone.
And I took the horrible decision, which I still question, always will. I think not only was my decision not right but how I did it was all wrong. I forgive myself because I know I was under such emotional stress I was almost psychotic. Until Felix's death, Yukon had been my sleeping companion, he was always at the foot of my bed, my guardian angel it seemed. I don't sleep as well since he's been gone, I feel his presence in my room at night, but at the same time I feel like I wasn't right with him, I was a mother gone out of control. I have since adopted a sick old cat an taking care of him like I should have my Yukon at least helps a bit.