Death of a cat

After eleven love-filled years, we lost Britnye's Tommy today. (He lived with us.) He was the most loving, affectionate lap cat we have ever had. He went down hill in a week and had to be put down to save him from more suffering. We had expected to part first with Marmalade, our orange tabby who is on prednisone for intestinal cancer. A week ago, he stopped eating, even treats, very unlike him. We tried to tempt him with wet cat food and tuna, but in that time I doubt he ate a teaspoon. Spent most of the time hiding in dark places. We had him at the vet's Saturday morning for about four hours, getting a saline infusion of 40 ml, and again on Sunday morning for another 30 ml, plus anti-nausea shots and blood work. They said his kidney function was very bad and both kidneys were swollen. No idea why. They would expect a kidney stone blockage or cancer to affect only one kidney. No sign of infection. This morning he had blood work again. Almost no improvement in kidney function, despite the infusions. They said they could do aggressive treatment, as feeding tube, hospitalizations, ultra sounds, etc., but the prognosis was worse than in 2013 (when we did a lot of that for another problem to the tune of $3K), and he would be pretty miserable. So we made the difficult decision to let go. Britnye was there. He will be sorely missed and impossible to replace. ~Bob