Goodbye Freddy

Very sadly, we had our cat Fred put to sleep tonight. After a long stretch of low-level chronic kidney failure, Freddy's kidneys failed this week, starting on Monday, I'd guess.

He'd been pretty gimpy for a year or two but it seemed to get much worse this week & he was pretty immobile for the past few days, though he did somehow manage to drag himself up the stairs & jump up into our bed one last time today--that was where I found him this afternoon. When the vet checked him out today, all of his kidney readings were about 4 times higher than the upper limit for healthy readings. He has had long term kidney issues so we've been monitoring the levels for a few years but these numbers were way worse than they were just back at the end of January, which the vet said indicated kidney failure.  Plus his blood glucose level was well into the elevated range for diabetes, which we had long worried about with Freddy. Rather than subject him to a lengthy hospital stay to try and get the kidney and diabetes under control temporarily, we decided that it was time to say goodbye to our beloved Freddy.

It was a very sad day for all of us. Iris said bye-bye to Freddy too :(

Here's one of my favorite Fred photos. It was take about 4 years ago with one of my old cell phones (which is why it's so low-res) but I think it captures Fred's personality perfectly, his whole, "this is how I am & you love me or you don't, whatev!" attitude.

Goodbye Freddy. You'll be in our thoughts for a long time to come.