Some Bad News

Our cat Carl has cancer. Yesterday Becky brought him to the vet for his annual check-up and the vet took one look at him and knew something was wrong. Carl has lost 6 pounds since his last check-up. Its liver cancer - if we are lucky the vet said Carl will probably live a few more months. But no guarantee. I had suspected something was wrong, but Becky and Ally had no clue and we are all really broken up about it.

When Ally arrived at our house Carl spent about a month in our bedroom. He never came out if Ally was around. After a month it was like he gave in and realized she wasn't leaving so he better get used to her. He made her his friend. He has been a feature on the blog for all that time and I've posted many times about how patient he is with her. Here are some of my favorites.

Yes that is Becky 12 years ago with Carl in the ergo baby carrier - we used him to try out  the baby carrier before Ally even came home. He always was such a good sport.

When Ally was little Carl was her first friend - at a playgroup when she was about 10 months old we caught her head butting another child - just the way Carl taught her. That is what he does when he likes you.  She used to say his name in 2 syllables Car-roll. So adorable.

When we told Ally the news last night she sobbed. We've had 2 big losses in the last 10 months (Grandma Barbie & our cat Nali) - and its hard to think about a third one. He is here with us now and we will shower him with love and affection for the rest of his time with us. We talked about how (to us) our job as pet owners is to give Carl the best life we can, within reason. We won't be doing chemotherapy or surgery. At the advice of our vet we will try some steroids to help Carl feel better. But we need to be prepared to let him go when he is in pain and can't enjoy life any more. It will be hard to do, Ally remembers it was hard with Nali, but it is the best thing we can do for him.

We have no idea if we will get another cat. Maybe we will just have Cloey for now. We talked about needing to grieve after Carl is gone and see how life feels. It will be a busy year for us and we will wait and see what feels right.