Reply to Elderly cats - death by a thousand cuts

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[quote=Anonymous]I’ve had two cats since they were tiny kittens. They’re now almost 15. My husband also had a cat, similar aged, so after we moved in together we had three cats. Between the three of them, over the first 12-13 years of their lives, we had one medical issue and one behavioral issue, each is which took about a year and a ton of energy (and a decent but not absurd amount of money) to solve. Plus, a handful of one-visit smaller medical stuff, no big deal. More than I expected with cats, but all manageable.

Well, about a year ago one of the cats started to deteriorate. Nothing sudden or large - small issue on top of small issue. Finally he just became too medically complex, a bigger issue came up, and so we put him to sleep about four months ago. We were sad, but also to be honest, a bit relieved to be done with all his various issues.

Well, since then, the remaining two cats (now almost 15), have started down this same road. Nothing dramatic or difficult or expensive to treat - if something like that happened, we’d definitely put a cat to sleep. But it’s just one thing after another. One started throwing up a lot, lots of tests and some medication to solve, the other developed hyperthyroidism, which is also easily solved with medication, except, whoops, bad reaction to the medication so we needed to fix that and try another medication, and now I’ve been in the cat emergency room for the past three hours because one stopped peeing and probably has a UTI (again, an easy fix).

NONE of these issues have been a big deal. But they add up, in expense (today is going to cost me at least $1300), but primarily in time, effort and energy. We have three kids under six, a house, we both work full time… we’re exhausted and I think both starting to feel resentful of the cats. Which then makes us feel incredibly guilty.

I can’t tell the vet to put a perfectly healthy cat to sleep over a UTI. But I also cannot keep dealing with another acute cat health issue every single freaking month. But I’m worried we’re on that path (again!) It’s not tenable!

My two oldest ended up watching a ton of TV today and not getting baths and we’re going to be starting our week in chaos which just sucks. The opportunity costs for this time and energy are REAL.

Any suggestions? Words of wisdom? I swear I’m not a bad person and I love these cats so much, but it’s just too much. [/quote]

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