You can stop here if you don’t wish to read anything sad today. It’s already bad enough with Roe v. Wade, war, and such, I know.

We lost our cat Maya yesterday. She just turned 18 the day before and her little body was simply failing.

She had been diagnosed with early kidney disease quite a while ago, and that had been mostly under control with us giving her near daily subcutaneous fluids (like an IV but under her skin rather than in a vein).

She was also on a twice-daily treatment of steroids to help her nasopharyngeal stenosis (breathing) issue.

Over last weekend, she took a turn for the worst with diarrhea and vomiting. In the past, we could always nurse her back to health in a few days (though the diarrhea thing was new). But by Wednesday, it was obvious this time was different.

She could barely walk, or even sit up. She was not going to the bathroom, and had almost stopped eating completely. Even her drinking dwindled (and she was drinking a lot because of her kidneys). And she began to hide away from us.

The vet was able to move up her appointment from next week to Thursday. She had lost some weight – the scale wasn’t accurate at such a low weight, but she came in at 3.8 pounds. He gave us “that conversation” but did say it might only be a matter of low potassium, which could be treated to get her back to normal. Even with that though, normal was likely to only last a few more weeks. Her outlook was not good.

The bloodwork and urinalysis came back the next day. Her kidneys were in much worse shape than last time, and the steroids had caused her to develop diabetes, which explained the weakness in her legs.

Her future was to be a needle three times a day (sub-q fluids, and two insulin shots), no more steriods (which would rapidly lead to breathing trouble again), and potassium supplements (which might require us to shove them in her mouth if she wouldn’t eat them crushed in food). All to watch her kidneys fail within a few weeks.

It was time.

As with Sasha before, I will not lament with memories here. I’ll simply add that my childhood dream of having a living doll was fulfilled, and Maya’s sweet preciousness will be missed deeply. And with Boy working from home, the loss of his office buddy will be quite notable.

At least the girls are back together again.