ARG
He's fourteen. Healthy as a cat half his age, most of the time. Aside from some (fixed) dental problems and a managed thyroid condition, never had any serious problems.
Then about a month ago his appetite starts tapering off. We switch up his food, thinking he might just be finicky, but it gets to the point where we basically have to hound him to get him to finish a tablespoon of food.
Then he stops eating. This is very serious, for a cat. Shows signs of nausea, licking his lips, etc, when presented with food. We take him to the vet, they do some bloodwork. At this point he'll only eat if we hold the food directly under his face, and then only sometimes.
The bloodwork shows that his thyroid is fine, but he has an elevated white count, so they prescribe broad antibiotics; pills compacted in tuna.
We try giving him one, but he collapses halfway through it. Just falls over, panting, losing control of his bladder.
We take him to the emergency vet.
Turns out he had a vagal episode... basically gagging so hard that his heart goes off, and he fainted. They give him an antibiotic shot and an anti-nausea shot, and for a few days we see improvement. He's a little more active, eating a bit more.
Then the nausea shot wears off and he's back to the way he was.
At this point the vet tells us that it's likely not a simple infection, or he'd be showing improvement by now.
Today he's going in for an ultrasound. They have to shave his belly, hold him down, wand him. He's going to hate it, be terrified, and not understand any of it, but it's the best thing to do for it.
The two most likely scenarios at this point are pancreatitis or possible an intestinal tumor. Both are very serious. Our household conversations have turned to "quality of life discussion."
It could be something else, of course. But we don't know. We won't know until tomorrow, probably.
And then we'll have to make some sort of really difficult decision.
