I posted here last year about the loss of our family dog. Now I'm dealing with the imminent loss of my cat, who's been with me my entire adult life and around whom every one of my major life decisions has been centered. This one's different.

He's more than my best friend; he's been the constant bright spot of my life, my best friend, my soul cat. It's him that I've been anchored to in life and that anchor made me strong, resilient, capable of fielding the strong winds of life from other directions.

He's a 14 year old brown tabby and his time will have been far too short, though I know it would never be enough. There wouldn't be a day I'd feel I'd gotten my full fill of him, but I know it would be easier if it were the end of a long and natural lifespan for a cat.

Over the last several years, I've had to be in near constant contact with vets and taking care of him for various conditions that were under control.

Finally, it's cancer that gets him.... and despite giving it our all with all the options available with his comorbidities, his tumor has grown 32% in length in just one month. Vet says to assume he's in near constant discomfort and also possibly pain.

What kills me is that we repeated his blood test yesterday and he's doing better than he was in most measures than the last blood test prior to diagnosis (vet suspects nothing visible there then as she also did an ultrasound at that time--six months ago). He's still curious and wants to go outside and chase birds and see the neighborhood...

He's lost 13% of his body weight over six months and is starting to strain to pee because his bladder feels full all the time (no blockage because that's not where the tumor is).

I've been in a state of shock and grief since May 26, but now that it's imminent, I'm less prepared than I ever thought I would be.

I held him in my arms and stepped out of the house for a little this morning... it feels so good to hold his little body. It feels so good when he tucks his head into the nape of my neck as I hold him...

I know I should be making this last day as memorable as possible, but I can't. He's thrown up multiple times this morning from food he ate yesterday and all he had were treats yesterday (which we let him have because he wouldn't have anything else).

I'm devastated and I don't know how to "soak in" these last few moments, how to imprint him in a way that will leave me with him even when he's gone.

I don't know how I'll get over this... I probably won't. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but what I feel deep down is that a very important, irreplaceable stone in the foundation is being displaced.

I've looked into animal communication and mediumship, psychedelics for grief and accessing other dimensions, etc. It's all that's keeping me able to put one foot in front of the other, the hope that I'll look for him and find him where he goes after this.

I don't know what I'm looking for here...there's nothing anyone can do.

Last night, I considered staying in the living room but thought we could do our ritual once more. I picked him up and took him to the bedroom. At first he hid under the bed, but as I gently whispered to him, asking him to visit me in dreams, promising him l would find him, reassuring him about what was happening/his transition, apologizing to him for all of the poking, prodding and medication administration over the last month of trying to fight this evil, thanking him for being an amazing, amazing cat, he came out of hiding and jumped onto the bed.

I kept speaking words of love to him and I like to think he understood... he repositioned himself so he could be facing me and began purring for the first time all day as he listened and looked at me with his beautiful green eyes.

Please M your responses My 14 YO male tabby cat has CKD, diabetes, and a recently diagnosed mass in his body. Because of his pre-existing conditions, he cannot be on Piroxicam and he did not respond well to a steroid (messed with his diabetes).

We are not considering surgery due to age and not considering radiation therapy or chemotherapy due to CKD and the need for him to be in clinic frequently (as well as side effects).

There are basically no options apparently other than "make him comfortable" for us, and we've spoken to his vet, another ER vet, a third generalist vet, an oncologist, and an internal medicine specialist.

The only hope we have is the oncologist we spoke to this morning (had to wait for this) said the diagnosis could be incorrect and there's a small chance this is something different. We're doing more imaging to get a better idea of what's going on as well as urine cytology, which the oncologist was surprised hasn't been done.

Once we get a confirmation, there's nothing to do.

Now, I have proactively put my cat on a mushroom mix, which the oncologist was in support of. He said we don't know exactly what the effects are but they can be supportive if the cat tolerates it. I'm using the Mushroom Gold from Pet Wellbeing.

Additionally, three days ago I started Panacur. His own vet said there's no evidence this works for cancer but to ask the oncologist. I put him on anyway because he doesn't have much time and at that point the oncologist appointment was many days away.

He's ~5 kg, and I'm doing 50 mg/day with some Omega 3 oil for cats. He's tolerating it...

The oncologist today said to stop because there's no evidence this works and over the long term this could have effects on bones. We didn't even get to me telling him about what dose I've put him on because he shut this down right away.

He said there was ONE STUDY done on this where Panacur was given to cells in vitro in such high doses that cannot be achieved in real life.

The trouble is it was the end of my appointment and I didn't wanna argue, BUT, Pub Med shows me many more studies in addition to the one he's familiar with. This is clearly a promising off-label use.

Does anyone have experience with panacur with cats for tumors? I've been told there's no known short-term issue, and I'm not sure at what dosage the long-term concerns come in, or at what length of treatment. My cat has been told he doesn't have long to live and this is a hail mary.

He's tolerating the low dosage well so far..M