Lucy died today around 4:30 PM. She was much loved by my oldest daughter and will be missed greatly. Sean buried her in my parents’ yard.

Faith is ok. This is the first time she has ever experienced a death, and she seems to be holding up fairly well.

Thank you everyone for your kind words.

We’re definitely going to put her to sleep. The vet said this was chronic and leading to kidney failure, and the measures we were taking were just postponing the inevitable.

4:30 today. Sean is digging her grave as I type.

Faith is very sad.

We have to put our, which is to say Faith’s beloved, cat to sleep. She has kidney problems that we cannot solve.

How am I going to tell Faith? She will be utterly heartbroken.

I am sadder than I thought I would be too. She has persistent UTIs that don’t clear with rx food and assorted antibiotics. We can’t afford to keep treating her.

Update: Talked to Sean and we will use the $20 it would cost to have her put to sleep to get her one more round of antibiotics. I’m going to call the vet tomorrow and see if maybe they will let us pay out a lab culture to see what the bacteria is that is causing this, maybe it needs a very specific atibiotic. If they can’t do that then I don’t know what we’ll do. I’m sad about this because she’s a beautiful creature full of grace and she loves Faith so much. She comes and sits in Faith’s lap and purrs and purrs. And Faith loves her beyond reason.

Little Lucy Cat, please, can we figure this out? I just want you to not pee on everything and to be healthy… I try to kid myself that I don’t care about her, I only care about Faith’s reaction to her death, but I do care. She’s just a little animal, a sweet little thing…

Sometimes it is very hard to be the grown-up.

Update 2: see here