When is it time to say goodbye to a friend?

I keep wondering if I’m keeping our gray ball of fluff (and bones) Ollie around for my own comfort.

Ollie has his good times and his bad times.

He was doing really well.  Then he stopped eating his canned special protein venison diet; so I switched to rabbit.

Disaster.

Vomiting back – check.

Diarrhea from hell back – check.

Stopped the rabbit.

Ollie still wouldn’t eat the canned venison.  But he will nibble at the dry venison cat food.

And he’ll eat chicken.  Preferably plain, and torn into little cat-bite size pieces.

So now, each week I bake some chicken breasts and cut them up.  I use the chicken in casseroles or soups, and the left overs go to Ollie.  Pretty much any time he’s willing to eat it.

He is so thin.

But the vomiting has cut way back and so has the diarrhea.

He wants me to hold him and he purrs, and purrs, and purrs.

He comes onto the bed at night to get more pets (more purrs) and to snooze a little bit with me.

And yesterday, I was playing with Leo with the TOY (the deer hide mouse on a wire that drives cats wild), and Ollie came and played too.

He doesn’t seem to be in any pain.  He seems comfortable.

He’s been sick for over a year now, and I should take him in for a checkup; but I don’t want to put him through the stress.

Seems stress always sets him back a bit.

I can relate.  (Says the woman who is on constant poop and vomit alert, and who has to clean the cat box repeatedly because if there is ANYTHING in the cat box, Ollie refuses to poop in it – cleanup in Aisle 5.)

He also gets stressed when we go away and he has to deal with (hide from) the pet sitter.

We don’t have any joint-trips planned for a while, and I’m hoping to see if he does better with a couple months of just his regular routine.

So as the song goes – not dead yet.

And if Ollie can take it, so can I.

We’ll just continue our little journey together for a few more miles.

Meanwhile, I’m enjoying each purr and snuggle we have left.