I want to express my thanks to this forum for helping me make the right decision to help Max over the Rainbow Bridge. Max was 18 - I got him as a six week old kitten from the animal shelter in my senior year in college when I was 22 - I'm turning 40 in a few weeks. Max was a grey tabby with a lot of fire in the belly and he had a great long life.
He was slowing down but basically fine until about 10 days ago when he went into steep decline. He stopped eating and drinking, didn't move around much, didn't use the litter box and I kept finding him in contorted positions as if he was trying to wriggle out of pain. I tried to get him to eat, hoping that he was just under some temporary illness, not willing to let go, believing that if I just tried harder he would recover. But today while reading this forum, I realized that I wasn't seeing his pain, I was just hoping it didn't exist or was fixable. I realized that unlike you and I, he had only one choice to avoid the pain, starve himself to death, which is exactly what he was trying to do.
He was slowing down but basically fine until about 10 days ago when he went into steep decline. He stopped eating and drinking, didn't move around much, didn't use the litter box and I kept finding him in contorted positions as if he was trying to wriggle out of pain. I tried to get him to eat, hoping that he was just under some temporary illness, not willing to let go, believing that if I just tried harder he would recover. But today while reading this forum, I realized that I wasn't seeing his pain, I was just hoping it didn't exist or was fixable. I realized that unlike you and I, he had only one choice to avoid the pain, starve himself to death, which is exactly what he was trying to do.