I just mentioned it in passing in March. But he wasn’t able to keep food down. It turned out, when we got back from the funeral in Michigan, that he had a growth in his small intestine, which we had surgically removed (at non-trivial expense). He was fine for a while, but apparently he was metastasizing, something that is hard to diagnose in a cat, but in August, he started losing weight.

He’s down to about 12 pounds from his peak weight before he got sick, of 17. We’re giving him appetite stimulant, anti-nausea drugs, and prednisone, but he’s still not eating much, and still vomiting occasionally. We took him back to the oncologist last week, but the prognosis isn’t good. His and Ashe’s 8th birthday is in November, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to see it. Not that cats know what birthdays are, of course.

I don’t think he’s afraid to die because, like birthdays, cats probably don’t give much thought to such things. They fear predators, but death is probably an unknown concept to them in any philosophical sense. But I’m afraid all we can do for now is to love him, and try to discern when he’s suffering enough that it’s time to say goodbye.

Here is their picture when we first brought them home after adopting them. At the time, we thought that Ember (on the right) was a girl, but he later turned out to be a boy, and a very sweet one.

Here he was, at about one year of age:

By the way, here is the Christmas post from which the kitten picture was taken. I should note that we have more pictures of those cats than any others we’ve had. I have none of Stella, who died in (IIRC) 2005.

[Monday-morning update]

I had it wrong; she passed in 2004.

[October 5 update]

He’s lost a couple more pounds, and is getting lethargic. He’s also wandering down to the street, and going into the neighbors’ yard, things he never used to do. We’re thinking that perhaps it’s close to time to let him go.

[Bumped]

[Evening update]

He spent the day hiding under the bed. He’s probably miserable. We have an appointment for tomorrow morning at the oncologist in San Pedro. We’ll keep the ashes, and store them in our curio cabinet with Stella’s.

[Tuesday-afternoon update]

If there is a cat heaven, he’s there now. No obvious way to tell his sister that she’ll never see him again; all we can do is give her hugs.