Marylyn, Thank you for the advice. I hadn't thought to ask Stretch what she wants, and will do that tonight. I don't know how much I will understand from her (or her me) without using a communicator, but maybe I will get lucky. She has been really good about taking the food I have fed her twice now, although this morning she wasn't as happy about it. Maybe that is a good sign though; maybe the food is making her feel better.
You make a good point about treatments maybe not being what an animal wants. I have pondered this a lot after I lost Cricket. I often wonder how I would have felt had I just taken him in to be pts, which was the original plan. Instead, after someone caringly suggested that a feeding tube might help save him or at least give him a little more time, which I thought was a great idea, to have one inserted. Part of why he was going downhill so fast was that he wasn't eating. Also, I selfishly wasn't ready to let him go, and I did want him to feel better and get some food on his stomach; no one feels good when they are starving. I do and don't regret my decision to insert the feeding tube. I would probably do the same thing given the same circumstances, yet I will never forget the last time we looked at each other with him being lucid, which was through the glass of the anesthesia gas box. He had that look like don't leave me and I told him it would be ok, and it wasn't. But you know, had he come out of it and not died that night and lived longer feeling better, I would have been elated that he had gotten the feeding tube. And that could have been the sitution given a different cat or had Cricket been in a little healthier place. We can never make all the right decisions, because we don't know all the variables and can't see into the future. Living with those decisions that don't turn out the way we would have liked can be hard. Thank you for taking the time to write. I will keep everyone posted on Stretch. Please keep us in your prayers. :) Wendy __________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com