Goodbye Tubby

I had a difficult decision to make yesterday.  I had to decide if I wanted treatment which would not be a cure but just a stop gap measure or to put Tubby down.

my pretty Tubby

We got Tubby in 1996, she was one of a litter of kittens that had been abandoned and rescued by a passing jogger who heard kittens mewing.  He had found them covered in red ants.  We were at the vets when he brought in the four little newly born kittens to see if the vet would look after them.  The vet did and when the kittens got older, they put them up for adoption.  My sons and I adopted one, a tiny kitten, with pretty eyelashes and a very large greedy appetite.  Hence the name Tubby.  She would eat till her tiny tummy would hit the floor and then she would stumble around like in a drunken stupor.

She never grew very big but she knew how to look after herself.  Our other cat was Pushka, a giant of a male cat but he was the most cowardly giant I ever saw!  What Tubby lacked in stature she made up for in daring and courage.  Pushka got sick in 2011, he had an aggressive form of cancer and his body was riddled with lumps.  We did try to save him, he went through surgery to remove the lumps and we were also considering chemo for him, but the lumps came back within weeks and we hung onto Pushka, as we were finding it hard to say goodbye.  He suffered and I regret making him suffer that much before we made the decision to put him down.
Tubby also had surgery in 2011, but her cancer was a milder form and she recovered fully.  A few weeks back Tubby was diagnosed with Hyperthyroidism.  She was losing weight, her heart was beating too fast.  She wouldn't take her tablets, we tried but it was too traumatic for her.  She would hide for hours, after we attempted to force feed her the tablets.   After we drew blood on one attempt, I decided to stop traumatising my Tubby.
I knew the end was coming when she started drooling so much.  She stopped cleaning herself as the drool would go all over her legs and face as she tried to clean.  Then yesterday there was diarrhoea.

No taxi would take my call for a pick up to the vets.  They refuse to take someone with a cat carrier.  I managed to talk to the vet on the phone and he gave me two options.  Give her the radiation Iodine treatment which would mean her being hospitalised for 6 weeks and see how it goes, or we could just leave her.  If she got no treatment she would deteriorate fast.   I made the decision to put her down.

My brother took son no 2 and I to the vet in the afternoon and we said goodbye to Tubby.