Mourning

No knitting content. We had to make that difficult call yesterday to put our oldest cat to sleep today.

We had to put Hemingway to sleep this afternoon. After dealing with diabetes (12 of his 13 years) and asthma (all 13 years), we were told last Friday that he also has cancer in his mouth. The growth was getting so large that he’s having difficulty swallowing. It hurts to even eat wet food or canned tuna (his favorite). He’s lost a lot of weight since the first of the year. He has been going into diabetic shock more and more frequently. It’s averaging once a week now.

The vet suggested putting him down last Friday, but we just weren’t ready to face that reality. But after yet another bad diabetic episode at 3 AM, we realized that we couldn’t just stand by and watch him slowly starve to death.

This little pound kitty came to us from Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem, MA. He’s done quite a bit of traveling in his life, probably more than most people in the US. He’s flown to the Oregon coast with us once for an extended visit, gone to Maine, moved to Seattle with us, and, most recently, to California.

We are going to miss the little fuzz ball and his plaintive whine … “Oh, man!”