More from Xavier: A Dog’s 10 Commandments. I prefer to say “pets” because this could very well apply to cats too.

Yeah, I’m a cat person but I know a dog’s in our future. Two of our cats are old. Ig is about 16 years old. She’s become rather frail in the past couple years. Very thin, these days pretty much skin and bones. We removed her collar because her fur had worn off under it (slowly growing back). When she meows, often nothing comes out (her meow is broken). On her left rear leg around the “knee” there’s been something… it was small, now it’s rather large. Vet doesn’t know exactly what it is, could just be something like calcification accumulation or it could be a tumor. He could do all sorts of expensive tests to determine what it is, but in the end the results would be the same. She’s just too old to operate, or to amputate… likely wouldn’t survive any surgeries at her age and state. So in the end, there’s nothing we can do. We just watch it grow. We watch her limp (it’s not bad, but it’s there). We watch her having a rough time sitting… she has to adjust how she sits which shifts her balance and sometimes you see her fall over. She can’t jump as high as she used to. But she can still run up the stairs after me… at least, when she’s not sleeping (she sleeps a lot these days). I’ve said that once she’s not running up the stairs after me, that’s going to be a hard day for me.

I’ve had Ig since she was a kitten. Got her in college. I recall my roommate and I going and picking her out, bringing her home. When my roommate left for Texas, Ig stayed with me. When I made my move to Texas, she came with me, locked in her carrier cage the whole 2000 mile trip, on the seat next to me in the cab of the U-Haul truck. Leaving all her kitty nose prints on the front window of my apartment in Bryan as she watched and waited for me to come home from my day of grad school whatever. And now, being here with me…. being her crotchity self but growing very warmly attached to my oldest child.

And like all living things, she grows old. So in reading the post from Xavier, #9 is what we’re doing. We just take care of her. She’s overall ok tho. Still a happy and loving cat. Just obvious that age is taking hold, and there’s no telling how much longer she’ll be with us. So we just love her while we’ve got her, spoil her while we can. And when it’s time for #10, it’s going to be one of the hardest things I’ll ever have to do in my life.