A Cat With Many Lives

Our little Burmese, Nikko, is 18 years and five months old. He has had a great life, full of love and affection. But the ravages of age have caught up with him as they will with us all. Cats are prone to kidney failure as they age. Nikko has had some of the symptoms for quite a while now, but he is a tough little fighter and he is still hanging in there. Recently he seemed to begin to really fail so we took him to the vet for an evaluation. The vet offered to perform a lot of painful, stressful and invasive tests, but Dan and I decided that we would not put Nikko or ourselves through that. Instead, we changed his diet to a food for cats with renal failure, and we're giving him a crushed up medication that the vet prescribed. He has rallied and seems to be more than holding his own for now. We realize that eventually he will fail even with these measures and that when he does it will be time to finally say good bye, but for the time being we're enjoying him and he seems to be doing well enough to continue. He has always had a great appetite and he still does. I call him an eating machine!