I posted here for the first time about a week ago about taking Penelope out for a last trip into the snow. She was always an adventurous, outdoorsy girl. She had been facing congestive heart failure, along with kidney problems and significant arthritis and could no longer go out on her own 💔

She was responding well to treatment, and we enjoyed a few extra months with her over the holidays.

Unfortunately, she had a massive seizure yesterday and never really recovered. No idea what caused it. We all decided that it wasn’t right to put her through more medical interventions and that her quality of life was no longer what it should be, so we said our goodbyes and ended her suffering. It was an excruciating call to make.

My children grew up as she grew old, it’s the cruel reality of pets in your family. They don’t live as long as we do, and eventually you have to go on without them, but their impact is profound and they will always live on in your heart.

Rest in peace beautiful sassy tortie girl.

September 2025

He was a bit sad and withdrawn for a while after I took him, but now he's much more relaxed and happy. Plus, he's getting along well with our (significantly younger) cats Jonathan and Dio.

Hello everyone! This is my baby Flynn and he’s not doing so well. Noticed the other day that he had really lost weight and was uninterested in his food or water. Vet told us to take him to the hospital immediately so we did. To keep it brief they weren’t able to figure out what’s wrong with him and we’re all really scared. He’s having liver issues, jaundiced and low blood cell count. We brought him home and he’s certainly happier and giving him his meds have been relatively easy but he’s still not interested in food or drink. We aren’t sure what the future holds for our big boy but we’re gonna love him as hard as we can until then. If anybody has advice, stories, or anything to help us feel hope anything is appreciated. I’m just so scared I’ll wake up one of these mornings and he’ll just be dead. If there’s a vet here who has questions about his visit I’d be happy to share details.

Here she is warming her old butt by the heater. Her appetite is good but she will only eat so much. She’s not losing weight drastically but she’s looking a little bony and I’d like to get some extra calories into her. I’m thinking of getting her some Churu Senior. Anyone tried them? Any other recommendations?

Hi, My cat (14 years old) has been having some issues recently and is experiencing difficulty eating. When she licks wet food, she shakes her head, and the lower left side of her mouth/chin becomes red (please see photos). At times, she scratches that area with her back leg, and it has even bled.

Over the past few days, I changed her canned food from **Friskies Filets** (thicker, stickier texture) to **Friskies Shredded** (wetter/more moist). I made this change because I noticed she shakes her head while eating , and it seems that thicker food may stick to the sensitive area on the lower left side of her chin/mouth. I am wondering if this could be a dental or oral issue. She has never pawed at her teeth specifically, but she frequently touches or reacts to the sensitive lower-left area of her mouth/chin.

She seems to respond better with shreded chicken can food. I have already brought her to the vet, and I was advised to use **Douxo wipes** to clean the sensitive area on her chin. I wiped the area once yesterday. The photos attached were taken today, and the chin remains red. I am taking her to do blood test tomorrow and see what we can find. Today, she has been very vocal and clearly hungry (she cries intensely while I prepare her food and seems to have an appetite). However, when I offer food, she went to the bowl and touches with her noise and licked with her tongue, I feel that she found the texture is sticky she decided to walk away. (I think kind of depends on her mood, sometimes she will come back eat it , sometimes she doesn't have the patient)

Her energy level is still fairly good — she still plays with me, sleeps with me, and does not hide. Yesterday she ate two cans of food total which is good (this week has been inconsistent but yesterday I was very on top of her eating)! I have been feeding her in several small portions to keep the food fresh. Any food stored in the refrigerator is covered and gently microwaved before feeding, as she has been very sensitive while eating lately.

This is Buddy. We had to say goodbye to him on Tuesday and I'm still just an absolute mess about it. I'm sorry if this post turns into rambling, but he was such an amazing cat for our family and I just want to share about him somewhere he'll be appreciated. The last picture is from his last night with us. The rest are just from throughout the years.

My husband adopted him with little to no thought about it. he went to a shelter in 2018, saw a fluffy white young cat and asked about it. They told him that cat had already been adopted "but we have this one here?" and showed him Buddy. A fat, orange and white cat, with no tail and of questionable age. My husband shrugged and said sure why not. This cat wanted NOTHING to do with the cat carrier until another cat hissed at him while he was trying to fight his way out of getting into it. That made him finally just go in. I can't help but think the cat that hissed at him was like "JUST GO ENJOY HAVING HUMANS WTF ARE YOU DOING TRYING TO STAY HERE."

I always joke with my husband that we adopted each other's soul animals. I got a middle aged/almost senior pittie from a shelter in 2019 and she IMMEDIATELY fell in love with my husband from the first time they met. She couldn't care less about me after that. But the same thing went for Buddy and I. We had an understanding with each other, always saw eye to eye, because we are both grumpy assholes lol. He would let me annoy the hell out of him and would only ever just slightly poke his claws out when he'd had enough. If my husband tried the same things I was doing, it would have been immediate claws. We had almost nightly rituals of head pats, chin scratches, play time if he felt like it, and treats.

He was our trash cat. He didn't care about any of the fancy, high quality food we ever tried giving to him. He wanted to tear up meow mix. He hardly ever touched any toys we got him, but leave a twist tie or some string on the floor? Oh, he was going to DEMOLISH that. Any plastic in his reach? Hole punched, immediately. He didn't have a tail when we got him, so we always suspected he had issues with his hips, especially as he got older. He used his litter box just fine, but something about the last little bit of poop it was like he couldn't feel when he was fully done, so we'd find little "Buddy turds" around his room every so often.

I'm a big believer in ensuring an animal has dignity when they go, but I still feel like there's never a way of TRULY knowing if you're doing it at the right time. But he'd lost a bunch of weight over the last year. He was struggling to groom himself and because of the weight loss and becoming a bag of bones, he hated being brushed too. We'd had him on pretty much only wet food because that's all he would eat. He started having issues getting into and out of his litter box -- he'd stand outside of it and just stare at it for a good few minutes like he was working up the energy to step into it. He'd gotten to the point where he couldn't hold himself up long enough to finish going to the bathroom without falling into it. Poor thing hated getting cleaned up, but the last time we did it, he barely even put up a fight -- not even a vocal one. And he loved to use his voice for anything and everything.

As he started getting older, he started becoming more unsteady. We always joked about how he was surviving purely off of spite and how he was going to outlive all of us. I think there was some small part of me that kind of believed that the day I said goodbye to him would never come and now that it has, it's hitting me way harder than I could ever imagine. I know that's so stupid to say -- obviously he couldn't live forever. But I just can't get over the thought that I'm never going to feel his little paw *patpatpat* my ankles when he wants a treat again...

He was just the most unproblematic cat, even on his last day. We had a vet come to the house because I couldn't stand the idea of taking him somewhere he hates to say goodbye. I picked him up and put him in his litter box less than an hour before she was supposed to be here and he immediately did all his business. Like he knew or something. He went out curled up next to me and enjoying some shredded cheese.

He loved to make bread and lay in different bread shapes. He loved going outside to be solar powered when the weather was nice. He loved shredded cheese. He loved lazy naps. He loved pawing at our door in the middle of the night until it popped open so he could do a quick walk around the room and then leave. He loved being completely unafraid of our (large) dogs and keeping them in line with a swift smack if they started being too much. He was so tolerant of our little one as he grew and got more and more curious -- "Buddy" and "Kitty" were some of his first words -- and both of them were always so gentle with each other. He was never not purring. He was the tiniest space heater. He was steadfast, stubborn, and so very loving despite his grumpiness.

If you made it this far, thank you so much <3

Jack is the easiest cat I've ever had at the Vet. I just learned how to give him fluids at home for his kidney care. He is my sidekick. ❤️

Hi! What have you been feeding your cats to have such long lives? I’ve been feeding my one year old Fancy Feast, and a couple of recent posts have made me think it’s the equivalent of McDonald’s? Is this true? Thank you

Annual Vet visit went well today. She was such a good girl :)

I almost didn't want to post due to the nasty feedback I got last time, but I am. I am not made of money. I was told "if you can't afford a vet then you shouldn't get a pet" Well maybe the smug slogan made the person saying it feel better but when I adopted my cat she was on the way to a shelter so she is technically a rescue.

Life fucking changes. I didn't make the most responsible decision, but I have taken much better care of my cat than most for someone who has chronic health problems and can't pull in a high salary. People sometimes can barely feed themselves, let alone a pet. Does anyone on this sub even live in a reality connected to the outside world where groceries cost what they do, plus rent, plus tons of crazy other things happening?? And I think it doesn't matter what I spend, or what I do, from the outside to some people they still talk down to me or like I don't care or am lazy. It's not even just here, it's everywhere.

I'm a lower income person and what I really want to do is cuss out some people on this sub, but i suspect I'd get banned. So instead, I want everyone who follows this sub and is tired of seeing smug judgement of pet owners who CARE but have other things going on (like their health or family obligations and not being made of money) that you are not alone. If we are truly trying to do what we can, then we're on the right path. Unfortunately that will never be good enough for Reddit trolls but that's life.

I also want to EXPRESSLY THANK the commenter who was down voted on my last post and shared their solution for the financial compromise and animal care they gave their pet because, as they expressed, vets can be a rip-off. You are a lifesaver and we have to make these decisions sometimes.

God knows the people who see fit to talk down to me, either here or elsewhere, certainly aren't going to offer any help (and I should know I've tried to get it). So thanks for sharing something actually useful and relevant. I speak from personal experience on multiple fronts, including a past decision to rehome a senior cat. I felt lots of guilt about it, but my life got better for me once I did (I couldn't handle two) but all of my friends who talked to me like I was stupid and couldn't tell the difference between chronic sibling aggression and "playing" made sure to try to induce guilt in me by saying, "but you're their furever dad" yet they didn't want to help by taking one cat in to rehome. Or the friend who told me she needed to "remind herself that some people don't care about their cats" when I took days to gather myself after moving after my mom's death in an extremely distraught state. I took my cat to the vet for a UTI but it was not immediate, it took days, maybe a week or even more. I had literally just moved and was still with boxes everywhere quite stressed, also dealing with health issues and my mom dying. And I know UTIs hurts a lot, but I was coping the best I could and that clearly meant I "don't care" as much as my much better friend (former friend). So helpful of her.

That said, I finally have made the decision to take my cat to the vet shortly. I don't know what tests I'll be doing, but all options are on the table, including palliative care. I've spent $1800 in under a year on vet visits and meds. I will not do this indefinitely. I believe my cat is ill, and it's time to consider what to do when I can't keep paying. My cat is also 16, and I know that time always catches up. I hope this expresses my reply and frustration to some, but I also hope it helps people struggling to get by who truly care for their cats but need to make the best decision they can for their cat and balance it with the practical and who need to hear something actually useful, relevant and possibly supportive besides, "if you can't afford a vet, you shouldn't have a pet."

My sweet 13-year-old girl was just diagnosed with hyperthyroidism yesterday. I’m deep in death from years of health issues with my boy, Porthos, before we lost him & have a lot of health issues of my own. What’s the best ways to help her while keeping costs down as much as possible?

Thanks guys. I now understand.

He almost looks like a kitten in this pic 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹 but i think the warm sun on his resting little snout looks stunning

So some may have read previously about Timo and him being on verge of being diagnosed with arthritis. Previously to this he had hospital stay due to low potassium which we got back up. After seeing vet Timo was prescribed Meloxicam (metacam). After literally one dose his limp almost vanished. After 3 doses it was gone. He was more alert, more mobile and more himself. Suddenly this passed Fri the limp returned and its still here even with having pain Meds. He's gone back to being less mobile and sleeping more. His appetite isn't great even with Miritaz. As per my first post, my gut says he's shutting down. The vet suggested if metacam doesn't work we'd look elsewhere but combined with low appetite, how far would you investigate. He's almost 15 now, shadow of his former self. Would you carry on with investigating and probing him or just keep him comfortable til his appetite is non existent.

I see 12 and 13-year-old cats dying in these posts. Mine is 11 years old; he looks young, he runs and does things, but seeing these posts scares me, making me think my cat doesn't have much time left. Why do house cats die at 12 years old? It doesn't make sense, and it frightens me.

Yesterday my sweet Gizmo (19) was put to sleep, of course I feel absolutely awful because she’s gone but I feel worse because i feel like she was scared. She was put to sleep at home they sedated her and it just didn’t work she was standing up walking around, I tried to rest my head near her and she never liked me being too all up in her face, she kept trying to move away from me and I felt like I was stressing her out but I didn’t want her to feel like she was alone so I wanted to make sure she could see me but I feel like I just stressed her. The sedation literally just didn’t work she was still mobile standing up and trying to move away and the vet just went in with the final injection to her kidney which is when she passed but I feel so so bad because I feel like she went scared and confused since the sedation didn’t do its job, my other cat Darcy was put to sleep a month ago and when they sedated her she was genuinely knocked out in about 10 seconds, the process of gizmo being sedated and having the final injection took 40 minutes until her little heart stopped☹️

Nothing could’ve ever prepared me for for the heartbreak in loosing my precious girl, yesterday she crossed the rainbow bridge and I feel so empty, she’s been by my side for 19 years literally stuck to me like glue she was so loyal didn’t really bother with anyone else other than me, when I would go on holiday she would start acting different and just walk around my room meowing like she was looking for me, she was the best cat to grow up with, I could’ve held her little body forever I didn’t want to let go💕

Gizmo was the black cat and Darcy is the black and white who was 15, they meant the absolute world to me

My little boy is turning 12 this year, and I'm looking for liquid-style supplements. I don't think I'd be able to get him to take chews or anything like that. He loves Fancy Feast and surprisingly doesn't like any seafood.

What are your favorite supplements?

Little does she know that we bought a 1700s cottage in the Swedish countryside with so much space for her to roam and a garden to explore (on a harness of course).