hyperthyroid and feline leukemia

Hello,
My 14 and a half year old cat has been diagnoised with hyperthyroid. She also has feline leukemia. The vet says nothing will work for her and wants me to put her to sleep. I'm at a loss as of what to do. She eats all the time which is not a problem. She is an inside cat and wakes us up all hours of the night. Jumping on the bed, sleeping on the answering machine causing it to play messages, knocking everything off of my dresser. Not her usual behavior at all. Anyone had this problem. Should I put her to sleep or just let her stay like she is until I have to do something? Thanks! Cathy

I cannot tell you to put her to sleep or not. I can only tell you to please keep her quality of life in mind when making the decision. I know you love her as I do my with my two cats. We put a 7 year old down in July due to kidney issues. His quality of life went down and no matter what we did or could do, his kidneys were just not going to get better. So we decided that the best thing for HIM was to put him down. Yes it hurt a lot for a while, but we survived his passing. There was a hole in our lives, so we adopted two kittens in August.

I hope this helped. Please remember to do what is in the best interest of the cat.

Hi! Cathy it is a very hard desicion to make and I know how you are feeling my beautiful girl Pinki has a virus Feline Immunodeficiency virus (cat aids) and she is quite sick and there is no cure, I will have to make the same thing as you very soon in the very near future! I think if they are in pain and no quality of life left it would be a kind thing to do,but it is hard to part from your baby!

Lots of prayers and well wishes!



Marilyn

Originally Posted by Cathyy

Hello,
My 14 and a half year old cat has been diagnoised with hyperthyroid. She also has feline leukemia. The vet says nothing will work for her and wants me to put her to sleep. I'm at a loss as of what to do. She eats all the time which is not a problem. She is an inside cat and wakes us up all hours of the night. Jumping on the bed, sleeping on the answering machine causing it to play messages, knocking everything off of my dresser. Not her usual behavior at all. Anyone had this problem. Should I put her to sleep or just let her stay like she is until I have to do something? Thanks! Cathy

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Your poor sweet baby! I had a boy cat who at sixteen also developed hyperthyrod disease. I had him on tapozole for a while but even then he began to have diarhea and not matter how much he ate (all the time) he continued to lose weight. During the last year of his life he had pnuemonia three times! We were constantly at the vet and finally I decided that it was time to put him to sleep. It was a hard decision to make and one that I took my time with. When the time is right I think that you 'feel' it as if the animal tells you....

Good luck and blessings--I 'know' how painful this is!

Wish I knew of a way to 'prevent' this awful disease....

Dear dear Cathy,
We have been where you are....just on the other side of the age spectrum. Our beloved Freddie (who was a gift from the hippie house across the street after we lost SiSi, Sasha's mama) was just 14 weeks when a test showed positive for FeLV. He didn't show any signs. He was Sasha's little brother and the light of our household. There are no words to describe how devastated we were. The vet called Eric instead of me because she knew I could not handle another loss. Eric and I had a long talk, but came to a rather quick decision: that even though the vet had recommended we put him down because the onslaught of the blood cancer to his little system would be overwhelming to him due to his immune system not even having a full chance to develop, we decided to ask Freddie. So we did. And what he said was that he still wanted to run and jump and do all his tricks and just be Freddie until it was time to go.


When he started to suffer, no matter how hard it was for us, we would know it was time. Only you can know this, Cathy. Only you. But senior kitties immunity systems are weaker with age, too, just the other end of the spectrum. All in all, Freddie lived 2 more months, lived a happy, happy active life until one morning we woke up and his fever was 103. We knew it was a matter of days. After he started rejecting food (9 days) we could no longer be selfish. The country vet came to our home and Sasha, Eric and I all held him and said goodbye in under 6 seconds. He was ready. We have a lovely spot for him out back where he can see both the hippie house and be in our backyard where he loved to be next to the shrubby knoll. Our peace, which hopefully will be your peace, is that we gave him THE very best little life until he said "ok". It was as if he talked to us. He certainly did to Sasha, who bathed him right until the last day.
You can PM me anytime and I will be here for you in this difficult time.
Love,
Elizabeth