Hello all, I am hoping for any guidance insights on our situation. Apologies for the long post, tl,dr we are unable to make the decision to say goodbye to our beloved but unwell cat.
Muffin is our 12 year old Manx cat. We adopted her 3 years ago, she did not have a very happy life before adopting her and she was not well treated by her previous human. We absolutely love her sweet nature and despite her problems feel like she truly belongs with us.
We are currently trying to decide what is best for her. Muffin has a long list of problems:
- Chronic Diarreah - We have spoken to several vets and tried many different things for her. Nothing works. She gets diarreah almost daily; it gets on herself, all over the floor/walls etc. We constantly have to catch her and clean her up.
- We believe that maybe her little manx "tail" might be making this worse - there is a little nub there that gets in the way of her bottom and she cannot move it - it has no bones or muscles.
- Hyperthyroidism - she takes medication for this daily (which she doesn't enjoy but will tolerate). We planned to give her radioactive treatment for this but are unable to because of her poop problems
- She has a "common" type of cancer in her tummy - her vets do not believe that this causes her diarreah. She is on another steroid daily tablet for this and will be for the rest of her life. She also takes a vitamin b12 shot once a month
- She has asthma, which the steroid also helps with.
- We have read about things called "manx syndrome" wherein the manx cat has a lower immune system and faces a slew of health problems their whole lives. there is no cure, but it is similar to the symptoms that pug dogs have - just poorly made up bodies and immune systems.
- Her newest diagnosis is she has an abscess in her mouth that needs operating on. She has had growth in her mouth before as this was part of her vet work when we adopted her.
- The most important note is that she absolutely HATES any sort of medical treatment or intervention. She is an extremely anxious cat. She poops herself in the car on the way to vets (despite receiving anti-anxiety medication) pants at the vet/is clearly frozen in terror. the last few times the vet has refused to vaccinate her because she is obviously beside herself with terror. She hates receiving her 2x daily medication. HATES being cleaned up (cries, attempts to run and makes the saddest little sounds). We have used home vets, but there is only so much they can do from home.
We are currently thinking that her medical problems with just be one after the other. It would be a different story if she was relaxed and easy going, but any kind of medical intervention is clearly traumatizing for her. We don't want her to suffer and we can't explain that these things are to help her.
Where we get emotionally stuck, is that aside from all I said above, she is a very happy cat when left alone. She is clearly not in pain in any way. She is sweet and social and loves to play. We call it "Muffin magic" because she will lay down with you and let you stroke her and it is honestly like falling into a trance, we can feel her love and contentedness. She is just so darling.
We don't want her to suffer, but we also don't want to do anything drastic just because it's hard. She doesn't suffer when left alone, however she has so many problems and will need lots of different treatments her whole life.
We want to do what's right for her. We love her so much but feel honestly selfish letting her go because she is not in pain, she isn't giving us signs that she wants to go. But we also don't want her to keep having to deal with these extremely distressing situations.
Please be gentle, any advice or support is welcome
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