It's so hard to say goodbye...

Wow, I didn’t think I would have to get so personal on this blog so quickly. But life happens, whether you want it to or not.

Some of you may know that one of our cats, Sokka, was diagnosed with diabetes early last year while I was pregnant with Owen. After the diagnosis, we dutifully gave him insulin shots and put him on a special diet. We also brought him into the vet regularly to get his glucose levels checked. We eventually lowered his dosage and our vet at the time recommended he got off insulin since the diet change was apparently the solution.

Fast forward a few months – I gave birth to Owen, moved to the suburbs, and returned to work after maternity leave. It was a few weeks after I started back at work that we noticed something was wrong with Sokka. He got scarily skinny and refused to eat or drink anything. When Brian found him in a pool of his own urine, he rushed him to the vet – it turned out his glucose levels were sky-high and he was severely dehydrated.

The vet literally saved his life, and told us that we needed to give Sokka insulin again. So, we started doing so, and at first he seemed like he was getting better….but over the next few months, it was apparent that he really wasn’t. His back legs became weak, so he couldn’t jump and play like he used to. He rarely snuggled with us anymore, and became very anxious and unhappy.

This all came to a head this past weekend, when we noticed the same signs he was exhibiting before when the vet needed to save his life – he refused to eat or drink much of anything and was very lethargic. We suspected hypoglycemia so we gave him karo syrup (he’s gone through an episode before so we were familiar with the symptoms and how to treat it) but he didn’t get any better.

Because his quality of life had rapidly gone downhill despite our efforts, and the fact that the semi-frequent vet visits stressed him out greatly, we made the difficult decision to put him to sleep. He was no longer the jovial, silly cat we had grown to love, and no amount of insulin, special diet cat food, glucose checks and vet visits at that point would change it for the better.

He will always be my little dopey Boo Monster, and I miss him so much. I hope he has a blast romping through the fields and catching squirrels in kitty heaven. 

Or, at the very least, batting at them playfully.