Monday, Clare had to take Zig to the veterinary hospital to have an ultrasound.
To put some back ground to it. I can't remember why we had to take her to the vets in the first place, but the best part of 2 years ago, we found out that she'd developed 2 problems. The first one was reasonably easy to sort out, she had thyroid problems and it meant a course of tablets.
The second problem was that it seemed that she'd got some sort of hepatitis and it was affecting her liver.
Over time, they'd prescribed god knows how many different types of meds to try and either cure or at least stabilise it.
Recently, she'd become quite skinny and when we put her on the scales, we found she only weighed fractionally over 2 kilo's, which meant she'd lost half a kilo or 20% of her body weight, which might not be much, but when you're a small cat, it's quite a bit.
So mondays' ultrasound was to see what was going on, as the blood test she'd had a couple of days before was inconclusive.
The result of the ultrasound was that her liver had got progressively bad, plus she'd developed some other liver related issues and that there was nothing else they could from a veterinary point of view for her.
We had to basically decide when, not if, she was put too sleep. Arrangements were made for it to happen this morning.
I still don't understand why it affected both of us so much. Whether because she was our smallest furry friend ? Or maybe that we'd invested so much time, money and other efforts to try and halt the worst of her health problems. Or maybe that while she wasn't really "my" cat, she would visit both of us for pets etc, I just don't know.
She was a very pretty cat, the picture above doesn't really do her justice. She certainly wasn't a "lap cat" either, but she'd sit quietly on the cushion she'd chosen as her seat. Between us on the sofa.
I'm still not in much of a mood about this, but I'm posting this for me really. I don't understand how I've ended up being so affected by the death, albeit euthanasia, of a very ill, small cat.
She will be greatly missed, despite us still having Tiddles and Flo, Charles and Stanley Ninja Gutbucket, and Zig's brother Zag (who I call Trevor when he's being a pain, which he does often).
Given todays mental torment that both of us have experienced, we hope that we won't have to have another "final visit" to the vets with anybody else, at least until they're very old.................
