My Cat Jazz Is Dying

I’ve written about this privately before, because I wasn’t ready to be more open about it until I knew. But I don’t have much room left to doubt– my kitty Jazz, a long-haired tortoiseshell female with a very touchy temperament, has been eating less and less, and losing weight, very rapidly. She’s fifteen and a half, so she’s elderly for a cat, and she’s lived a good, long life– but her going from healthy and a little too fat to emaciated has happened in a very, VERY short amount of time. In mid-May she was still ornery and sweet, chirping happily to people and loving to hang out with me. Just 3 weeks ago, she was doing SO well, I actually wondered at it! My old cat was remarkably perky, I thought happily to myself.

Less than a month later and she doesn’t even resemble her old self.

Of course, I don’t have the money to take her to the vet, and that kills me. What if it’s something simple? What if it doesn’t have to be the end quite yet? And at the rate she’s going, she doesn’t have more than maybe a week or so left?

On top of everything else that’s going on, there’s this understanding that the end is coming, and I shouldn’t be shocked by it, but I am. Unfortunately, my nervous system has decided that grief = danger (probably because of all the bullshit I went through during my divorce) and the smallest push sends me careening off into panic attacks.

Cat isn’t helping. She’s talking to me again finally, but she keeps saying “I have nothing left to give”!! What does she think I’m going to ask her? I know she doesn’t have the money to take Jazz to the vet, and it would probably be a waste anyways! But she doesn’t want to be around me or talk to me much, STILL. I know it’s because I cut off her casual threats to “quit” things and she’s pulled way back, maybe to punish me, maybe because she’s just petulant about it all. In any event, NOW is the worst possible time to pull away from me emotionally.

The last few days I’ve been a mess. Crying off and on all day long…

But I’m also spoiling Jazz and letting her sleep and hang out in my room, when normally, due to allergies, she doesn’t do that too often. Right now, with all the crying, I barely notice my allergies, so there’s that I guess.