I posted earlier this year about our 14-year-old neutered black male
Moses, who we nearly lost to IBD before getting a handle on things with
proper food, medication, etc., helped by info I received from nice folks
here and elsewhere.

     I mentioned at the time that we had another cat, Bartholemew, also a
14-year-old
     neutered male, an orange tabby, who was the picture of health and had
never showed any IBD symptoms.

     Over the last month or so, we started noticing that Bartholemew was
not eating
     normally and appeared to be losing a bit of weight. It was noticeable
because we'd
     been feeding him the same high-grade food we'd been feeding Moses, and
Bartholemew
     actually got a bit pudgy on the diet.

     In hindsight, we probably should've taken him to the vet right off,
but he's always been kind of a picky eater so we kept changing foods, etc.,
trying to find
     something he'd like, and there were times when it appeared that he was
putting a bit of weight back on and he never did act obviously sick or
anything, in a lot of ways he was his usual frisky self.

     However, over the last week to 10 days, he just about stopped eating
and did start
     showing signs of being obviously sick, to the point of hiding from us
all day long and not coming out unless we dragged him out. He got emaciated
to the point
     of looking skeletal, went from being a bit thin to having lost nearly
half his
     body weight really, really fast.

     So, we took him to the vet, they did the appropriate tests, exams,
X-rays, bloodwork, etc., and found that he was absolutely riddled with
cancer, definitely in the liver and most likely in the kidneys and gall
bladder as well, probably pretty much diffuse throughout his abdomen.

     Our vet called this a.m. after discussing the case with some
colleagues and said that there were things that could be done to "make him
feel better" ... heavy
     prednisone, a few other things ... but that it would only be pallative
treatment and that in the end, he would either lie down one day and die on
his own or we would have to have him euthanized. He said the best-case
scenario would be six months, but that in his judgment we'd be lucky to get
anywhere close to that.

     My wife and I had already discussed this before the phone call ... he
was her cat and predated me on the scene; she got him from the pound when he
was a kitten and found out later that he was most likely only three weeks
old at the time, when the youngest age at which a cat is supposed to be
available for adoption is six weeks,
     so if she hadn't have gotten him, he'd likely have been euthanized
within a matter of days, because he was sickly at the time and in fact
nearly died from intestinal problems right after she got him, and she nursed
him back to health. It's not registering with her now because she's
grief-stricken, but I've told her over and over and our vet pointed out the
same thing today, that she deserves a lot of credit for providing this cat
with 14 years of good life that he all but certainly would not have had
otherwise.

     Anyway, she made the point when we talked that if we took these heroic
measures to try to buy him a few weeks, we'd be doing it for us, not for
him, and that we should end his sickness and suffering ... which we did
today.

     So, we have only Moses now, and I just wanted to thank everyone for
the help they offered earlier this year, because we were within an eyelash
of losing him as
     well, and now he's healthy and hearty and robust and hopefully we will
have him around for at least a few more years.