Other Cat's new life in the country

cat and daisies, originally uploaded by London looks.

Poor old Other Cat (who blogged anonymously), she's gone to a new life in the country. A farm, just over the rainbow bridge, turn left at the field of dreams.

Ahem.

Poor old Other Cat. She'd always struggled with her food allergies. We'd managed it for years by feeding her ridiculously expensive cat food and keeping her away from people junk food (which she loved). Over the past few months, the food allergies had come back in spades. She couldn't keep the ridiculously expensive cat food down. She couldn't even keep the beyond ridiculously expensive cat food down ($90 a month, just for food). Each morning we searched for cat puke, hoping we'd find it all before Buddy did. The garden was full of cat puke. The sores on her skin were coming back (her skin itched so bad from the allergies that she would literally tear holes in herself).

We couldn't take care of her anymore. And rehoming wasn't an option for poor old Other Cat - a kitty who would flee in terror from regular visitors, the mailman, the gas man and lately the baby (although to be fair he would pull on her fur, which must have been torture considering the state of her skin). She was a cat who mourned and pined pitifully for weeks and weeks when her mother died - and we felt sure she would pine for us, too. (She always did when we were away.)

The decision has been weighing on us for a long time. It seems like a lame thing to put a cat down for - food allergies. But crawling babies and cat vomit don't mix well. And Other Cat wasn't happy and was getting less happy.

I have to be honest and say if we were childless still we would have tried harder and kept her going for longer. But we aren't and we just didn't have the energy to take the extraordinary measures to keep her going in a good state. Today was the end for her, a little over a week shy of her eighth birthday.

We were with her when she was born and we were with her when she died.

Poor old Other Cat.