The road to recovery stops here. My cat died. Please read

As some of you may know already, my oldest cat of 12 years got something really bad and never did make a full recovery. If you don't know, let me describe a little bit about the situation and what a great cat he was. Here’s the history.

It was 12 years ago, so I would be 7 years old at this time. We all decided we needed to get a cat. Or, another one, being the cat-lovers we all are.

So we all went down to the animal shelter, and we looked at the cats they had. They were all adorable, but one seemed to stand out above the others. We knew he was something special when we saw him. After we all picked him up and cuddled him a bit, we knew which cat to get. The little black and white tiger-stripe kitten.

So we took him home and we cared for him and loved him, and he took over our home and our hearts.

There were some rough times: he had a recurring eye problem (nothing that was not easily cured by a quick trip to the vet to get the antibiotic we knew helped him and he caught a cold one time, but he was never truly sick.

That is, until recently.

The one big problem he had gotten a couple weeks ago was "impacted anal glands". He licked around that area, as cats do, and picked up the bacteria in his mouth that caused the infection throughout his body. Because of the excessive licking he developed a rash. He would lick a little higher and cause the rash to spread until he had this rash all on his underside. Fur was falling out of his stomach and underside, he had a rash, not to mention this bacterial infection.

Well this infection totally sucked his strength and desire to eat.

We weren't giving up that easily though and we got him some canned cat food. Well he wolfed that down! He ate three and a half heaping spoonfuls of it. Things were looking up, if only momentarily.

His back left leg was irritated as he was stretching it more and more, and the culmination of this whole situation came today.

I woke up and came downstairs at 11 AM as usual when I noticed some cat poop on the floor near the plant stand. Well I knew he wasn't very strong these last couple of days so I cleaned it up. About an hour later I heard scratching on the floor. I looked over, and there he is, leg stretched behind him, turning circles. Poor guy.

So I picked him up and put him on the couch, laying him down sideways on the couch. That's when he took a pee on the floor without even trying to go downstairs to the litter box. He just didn't have the energy.

So we decided to have him put down.

We went to the vet, but the one day we did, he was booked solid. Then that same night, we, for some reason, decided not to apply the medication to the rash, as it was obviously just getting worse. Wouldn’t you know it, he didn’t stretch his leg as much. So we took him back to the vet to have him re-examine the medication. He got new meds and was on the road to recovery. We shaved both his sides because he was a long-haired cat and the wet fur was gettiong matted and making the rash worse. So the rash healed, but he was a bald cat on his sides. As a result, he was very cold and shivering a lot of the time.

This was a short road, apparently.

It must have split off into a dead end somewhere, because just today, at 9:10 AM Eastern Standard Time, my cat woke me up with these un-catlike meows. I looked over the stairs and he is at the bottom of the stairs, trying to stand and falling down. I called my mom’s boss and told her to get my mom on the phone. She did after what seemed like an eternity, but was only two minutes, and my mom said to wrap him up in an old sweater and lay him on a blanket on the floor. So I did.

After two hours of fighting for his life, my cat died, on the kitchen floor, wrapped in the sweater on the blanket. I was there with him the whole time. I actually watched him go. It was terrible to see him suffer so badly. He did not deserve to go out that way. He deserved do die quick and painless, but it didn’t happen that way.

At least he had someone who loved him around when he died. He did not die alone. I hope the last thing he felt was me scratching him behind the ears.

I remember playing Super Mario brothers for the NES, and there he was, crouched and waiting, tail flicking back and forth. When I made Mario jump, the cat would jump up and try to catch him! It was so funny... I have many more good memories of him and he will never truly die if I never forget him.

I have attached a picture of my cat. This is an older pic, as we had no recent ones, but if you replace some of the black fur on his side with grey, you get the idea.

[edit] I don't know why, but I scanned it and apparently the forums took it. It's good so now everyone can see him. [/edit]

I'm not taking it as hard as you'd think really. Sure it still hurts, and pretty bad, but I was comforting him in his death. The thought that i was there for him when he needed someone comforts me. The thought he did not die alone comforts me, and the thought that he won't truly die if I don't forget him comforts me too.

The vet called about what it was. After the autopsy they discovered it was pancreatic cancer that spread to his liver that killed him. There would have been no hope of recovery. This is really bad because hope was looking up too.

I'm just glad that if he had to die in our house, I could be there with him, and that he wasn't alone in his greatest time of need.

My mom told me that cats die from the back end up, so when I was scratching his ears I know he could feel it.

I hope he is having a good time in heaven.