by Bernice Campbell
Well now what can I say....ceptin this was our first real "play with" type pet....oh we'd had birds, and when we started living together I had a persian cat that impregnated the neighbourhood and was never home. But "CAT", I paid $2 for him to a young child and brought him home and my other half was not impressed, But after about 2 or 3 days you couldn't keep them apart. He was definately Dad's boy. Well we had him for 8 years and he weighed 11kg or about 25lb. He was beautiful, he kept us company when we were alone and he kept us company when we wern't. He was a good foot-warmer in the winter (such as it is up here in the tropics) but he loved to cuddle up as soon as a chill came in the night. Then one day last September...we sorta remarked that the cat was lookin a bit thin on it. We put it down to the fact that he just loved to chase and eat lizard's and gheko's. Then he started to drink water...WATER?...never been known to do that before, so I said to my other half "how about we take him to the vet and see if he needs worming or something." Well that was just the start of our heart-ache...the vet took blood samples (my god how they can charge) and told us to ring back the next day at 10am as they had to go to Brisbane for analysis. At 10am the next day I rang and the results hadn't come back. At 5pm that day we got the bad news. Our "CAT" was a cronic diabetic. SUGAR DIABETIES? in cats..never heard of it. I aksed what our options were and was told that we could spend thousands of dollars on insulin...($35 just for visit plus insulin on top) and there was no guarantee that it would work. Our other option was to have him put down. NO NO NO we both said NO. After we got home and thought about it we realized that WE were only thinking of our pain and not his. So we took him back 2 days later and bade him goodbye with tears streaming down our faces. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. But "CAT" if there are computers in heaven and you happen to be on the net I hope you see this and understand that we just had to do it. OMG how we miss you......cuddles