Quote:
Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate
I ended up putting my companion of 12 years down tonight. As mentioned previously in this thread, she had a malignant tumor on her paw.. and last weekend she ripped the tumor open and it's been bleeding on and off ever since. She could barely walk at all and when she did, she tried hopping everywhere. The vet said it wasn't going to get any better and it was likely quite painful for her. It's extremely hard when the animal is mentally alert and still seemed spry for her age, save for having the tumor on her paw. The vet said that if the tumor was elsewhere, she'd recommend waiting until the cancer took more of a toll on her health, but given that it was on the bottom of her foot, it was torture to keep going.... malignant tumors don't heal.
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Sorry to hear. My girlfriend and I had to put our two year-old cat down just over a year ago because she contracted what's known as feline infectious peritonitis. Our cat wasn't eating very much and I had attributed it to her not liking her food very much. I then left town to go visit my dad for 10 days and the next day my girlfriend called me crying because the vet had told her what our cat had.
My girlfriend waited for me to come home before having her put down, but it was a tough decision to make. Tinkerbell (my girlfriend named her) was starving herself because disease caused her stomach to swell up with fluid. The vet told us there was no cure for the disease. She said technically if we put her on various drugs and force fed her she might have lived for another 3-6 months, but eventually she would die and she would likely suffer during this time.
Like you, it was my first time actually going to the vet and having my pet put down. How young and healthy she was two weeks earlier made it that much more of a difficult decision. It's really hard saying goodbye to an animal and not being able to explain to them why you're doing it. We've since taken in two new kittens but I still miss Tinkerbell quite a lot.
