Just wanted to ask for a few prayers. today my mom and I had to put one of my moms 3 cats down. My mom has had these 3 cats since babies, the one that was put down today was 25 years old. she lived a full life and was becoming very arthritic and in a lot of pain so we brought her and the 2nd oldest cat (i'll tell u about her in a min) to the vet today to be looked at and the vet made teh decision that smoke, the 25 yr old kitty, needed to be put to rest that it wasn't right to keep her alive any more as fiesty as she was before the end. mom couldn't be in the room while they did it, so i stayed with her. i didn't realize it'd be so hard, i was bawling the minute they put the needle in. but R.I.P. smokey, we love you

and then the other cat i mentioned she's 14 years old and her health more recently had been dwindling and we were afraid he was going to give us the same diagnosis as she was originally a feral cat mom took in as a kitten and thought she may be under the same fate but thank goodness, the vet, who has been part of my mom's cat family all their lives, said there was no need, she just needed thyroid meds to control her thyroid (she wasn't gaining any weight despite any amount of food she ate). she's staying the weekend at the vet now getting fluids and meds and will hopefully be strong enough to come back home to us on monday or tuesday with just the thyroid meds needed to be given daily. so that's where the prayers need to come in.

our 3rd cat who is rusty my big baby, is fat n happy n healthy and enjoying having some alone time at home and he sends his hello's.

just thought i would share, helps to move on.

Sorry for you mom and your loss.

I'm so sorry, but is sounds like you made good decisions here.  There is a time where the quality of life is bad and doing the thing that is best for the pet is not easy.  It's a true act of love to do what you and your mother did, and I admire you for it.

Sharing does help.  I'm sorry for your family's loss.  We had a cat live to be 21, and I thought THAT was something!  But 25?  That's amazing...but the downside is the longer they're with us, the harder it is to let them go.  Hopefully the meds will help the other kitty live just as long, if not longer!

We had to have our chocolate lab put down in June '07, and even though it was hard, we knew he'd never have any quality of life again.  It was the hardest and easiest decision I've ever made.  I stayed with him through it all.   He was sick and scared and I wasn't about to let him die in a place he'd never been in around a bunch of people he didn't know.  I rubbed his ears (his favorite) from the minute they brought him to me in preparation for the euthanasia until well after his heart stopped beating.  I didn't care what was on the floor; I went down with him when he fell and layed there with him for a while.  In contrast to the death he would have died had we let him live, it was so peaceful.  Dutch was alive one second, and literally, the next, he wasn't. 

Kudos to you for staying with the kitty.  The last thing it (can't remember if you said male or female - sorry) knew was something familiar.  A familiar face, voice, touch, smell....I can't think of a more comforting thing that could have been done.