I came home yesterday to a passed-away cat. (a lot of whining and guilt inside)→[More:]

We have (had) 4 cats and a dog. Ahbuh (Aboo) was the oldest. "Ahbuh" is the Lakota word for sleep. When we got her as a kitten it was with a sister litter-mate, who got run over very soon after we got them. Since then, Ahbuh always seemed lost and not very happy. She was always a loner, and got picked on by one of our male cats. I told my wife many times that Ahbuh reminded me of her (wife's) mother. Very grouchy, resistant to any small changes, etc.

Of late, Blackberry, our second-youngest cat, was getting chronic infections and they finally took blood and he is positive for feline leukemia, even though we always stay up on all vaccinations. We have been nursing Blackberry along, and he is stable, sort of like someone who is HIV positive but asymptomatic. He pretty much ran the neighborhood, in a "good" way, other than to any other male cats who challenged his benevolent rule. Those, he fought with. Hence woulds, hence assumedly, huge doses of the virus. He's an indoor cat now, living the life of a retiree.

In all of this, we sort of neglected Ahbuh, who was 16 when she died yesterday. We noticed she was losing weight, but she WAS eating and drinking. Wife and I both agreed that we would not get vet care for her, because our (housecall) vet has just lost her hub to leukemia, and we did not want to bring up any extra "stuff" for her, plus we are a bit strapped, with kid in college now. So we made Ahbuh as comfortable as possible, with the best possible food, and just sorta watched her decline.

Until yesterday when I came home and she was dead and stiff in the hallway. We dug a grave (beside her sister) and buried her, saying a few words about how sorry we are that her life was hard and she rarely seemed content.

I have no doubt that we could have kept her alive through medication, hydrating her (we kept one of our other cats alive for a year via subcutaneous hydration) but it just always seemed "too much,' even though Blackberry has gotten a lot of attention and we do stuff for our animals like getting BOTH ACL's fixed on the dog (at 2K a pop).

It's just not like us to be this neglectful, and I think it had to do with this cat's personality, as well as emotional resources and money. When our vet DOES make her annual visit (next month) we'll have to explain, and the vet will be somewhat disapproving of us (she has "fired" clients for not taking adequate care of their animals).

That said, life will be easier now, with "just" 3 cats and the dog.