farewell, dear chloe

We bid a very sad farewell today to our awesome cat, Chloe. Her kidneys finally gave out after almost 16 years (all of it with Susan, the last 8 with me, and the last 6 months or so with Exie – she stayed at Susan’s mom’s for a while after Exie was born, so she’s only been with us for the second half of Exie’s first year). A few weeks ago we took her to the Vet because she had stopped eating. The diagnosis was pretty pessimistic, but there was a small chance that pumping her full of fluids on a daily basis might keep her going for a while, so we tried that. (It turns out that you can inject a fairly large amount of water under the skin on the back of a cat’s neck and they actually absorb it, but not until they look like Igor for a bit due to the extra water up there, followed by a swollen left/right paw depending on which side it flows down. Big ugly needle, but they taught me how to do it and it wasn’t so bad. Fortunately Chloe didn’t seem to mind.) Unfortunately, her numbers didn’t improve by a significant amount and it was obvious that she was uncomfortable. So yesterday we made the tough decision to let her go.

Lots of tears. She was a great cat. She loved laps and nori. Yea, nori.

learning to be gentle

mmm… cat… yummy

saying goodbye for last time

To make it even sadder, Exie and Chloe were just starting to interact a bit, which was fun to watch. And this afternoon (after Chloe was gone – I took her in this morning) Exie looked around from her highchair and said, “mm-aa-ow,” which is one of the few words she can say. Ugh. Here’s a recording from the day before:

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Take care, dearest Chloe – we miss you and love you and will always remember you!

Love, Susan & Grace & Exie