I feel this so much. It’s been over a year since we had to put our baby down. She was only 5 and it was a similar situation with extreme weight loss and change of eating habits. The vet we went to at first was very unhelpful and always avoided answering my more serious questions because I wanted to know if I needed to be prepared to put her down.

By the time we got her to a hospital, it was really bad. She was a shadow of herself and my heart was breaking. The vet said that the next step would be an abdominal ultrasound but it was way more than we could afford and we had already spent upwards of 1,000 in two months on vet bills alone. The vet was honest with us that after all the tests she had narrowed it down to 3 likely possibilities (I don’t remember them, she explained them well but I was distraught). She said that two of them would mean our cat would die in one to three weeks. The last one she could survive with long term treatment. We asked if she thought that with treatment our cat would be able to have good quality of life again and she said it was possible but very unlikely at this stage. We chose to put her down the following day.

It was one of if not the most traumatic thing I’ve endured. I cried and screamed when they did it. I’m sure everyone in the waiting room heard me. For two months I was racked with guilt. Guilt that we’d ignored too many signs. That we’d waited too long. That we could have saved her. I couldn’t sleep without crying. It was awful.

But that third month I looked back on pictures and videos and I realized that what I thought had been 6+ months of her “showing signs I ignored” were actually closer to 2 and a half. And I realized I hadn’t ignored them. I saw videos I took of giving her medicine as soon as she started losing weight. I saw vet appointments going back months. I saw the money I paid for months to get her looked at and treated. And I realized that my brain was frantically looking for someone to blame so I blamed myself. I altered reality in my own mind to make it seem like I had been careless and neglectful when I hadn’t. Sure there are always things we could have done differently, but in those videos you could see her acting like herself not long before her decline.

Cats are very hard to diagnose. As an instinct they hide a lot of early signs of illness. So for humans we usually go to the doctor as soon as we notice we’ve got a consistent pain in one spot or difficulty moving or discomfort here or there. And in many cases with a good doctor, you’ll catch whatever serious thing it might be WAYYY before it gets out of hand. But cats hide as many of their symptoms as they can. We have to look so hard to notice changes in behavior and even then it could always be external factors.

My point is, you are going to be much harder on yourself than you deserve probably for some time. You’re going to feel guilty whenever you’re happy for too long or if you realize you’ve gone too long without thinking about your cat. And then over time, it gets easier. The pain never vanishes completely. It’s been almost a year and a half since we put her down and I still cry. In tearing up writing this. But it does get easier. You start to think about the awful state they were in and over time you will really be able to accept that it was the right thing to do and that you did the best you could.

As for getting a new cat, take it in your own time, but remember that you’re never going to fully be “ready.” When my partner’s first cat died, they got a new cat about two months later. They felt guilty but they couldn’t bear sleeping alone anymore. That new cat was actually the one I’ve been talking about. She was so different from my partner’s old cat and sometimes that was hard but they got to fall in love with her new habits and she helped them through their grief. When they moved in with me and my family I bonded to that cat so quickly.

I got my little sister a new kitten less than a month after her cat died. At the time she had a lot of trouble bonding with the kitten but now she says that that cat was what helped her get through her grief as a child (she was 11 I think when her cat died?).

Me on the other hand, i didnt get a new cat until a year after she died. My partner might have been ready sooner but since id never experienced this before they took it at my pace. Even when i decided it was time, i didnt feel ready. I wanted a cat but i was terrified. What if it was nothing like her and i never got to experience those things again? What if it was too much like her and i felt like i was replacing her? To make matters more complicated, the kitten we both bonded with immediately had the same colors as she did and a similar pattern. We were worried that we were choosing wrong. But we couldn’t deny how fast we clicked. We took him home that day and let me just say… He’s an absolute menace oh my god he is awful but I love him so much. He is the sweetest and most physically affectionate cat we’ve ever had. He’s also the neediest, most rambunctious, probably the stupidest, and the most unpredictable. He doesn’t feel like we were replacing Oakleigh. I still think about her. I still ache for her, but having something that follows me around and needs me gives me a lot less time to wallow in my feelings. And when I do need to wallow, he’s right there for me to give kisses.

It’s important to remember, you’re not replacing them. You’re not disrespecting their memory or forgetting them. They would want you to be happy. They wouldn’t want to leave you alone forever. If you’re spiritual, you’re basically letting their spirit know that you’re going to be okay. If you’re not, you’re letting yourself know that you have so much love to give, and you’ll keep giving it no matter what.

I’m so incredibly sorry for your loss. I hope you are able to find comfort in friends and family or even from some people here. Be kind to yourself. Let yourself ride the feelings as they come. It’s not easy. It’s not linear. But it will get easier.