We are a catless family now, our last cat died last year...we are getting old it gets harder and harder when you are old to have part of your family die. Also, since one daughter has five cats and the other has six, they cannot take our cats when we die...I am seventy, the wife is seventy three.
We had two outside cats and usually three inside cats for decades. they were part of our family. The outside cats were not fixed, so we gave away lots of cats, Folie, the last of the kids we had died around four years ago, after his father died but before his mother died. Folie and his dad died from a back injury which paralyzed them in the back half for three or four days before they died. A blood clot at the spine caused that, and it is terminal because it effects the kidneys so they suffered in the end. We chose not to have them put down, hoping they would get better, the vet said sometimes they survive if bloodflow is not hampered too long. But we did not luck out, but I did not want to give up. the vets blood thinners did not disolve the fathers clot either....they slowly got paralyzed, took about two days for both as they lost function of their rear legs....and because they were stubborn, the father died in the cat litter box, and Folie was adamant in dragging himself to the litter box...they did not want us to be burdened by them having an accident. Our last boy piper, he also felt bad when he lost control and wanted to go to the litter box to pee too.
No more heartbreak in this house, we will occasionally cat sit when the daughter is out of town or my ex wife is in the hospital or out of the town for doctors appointments and tests, but I spoil the shit out of my exes cat when it is here...bold hormel pepperoni, canned wild caught salmon...never any tuna because it is not good for cats...and of course good homecooked chicken and grassfed organic beef.
The cat drives my ex crazy when we bring it back to her...it is all healthy and running around with energy. She says the cat pukes at home, but it never pukes here, nor does it puke for a week after it gets home...she feeds it all canned cat food, that stuff is garbage these days. Yes, we did feed it some catfood at night, and I did give it special supplements that I gave our cats, sodium molybdate and taurine and some multimineral...a sprinkle of the mixture in its cat food to make up for the loss from eating cooked meats for fifty percent of our diet here.
Serves the ex for causing me headaches when we were married, I make her cat healthy so it has more energy to bother her when she gets it back.

I am so mean.