Feel for you. We lost two in the last year – Fat Jasper last year; he started failing of liver problems, we put him through all sorts of tests and treatments at the vet, which he hated, to no avail, and then finally had to put him to sleep anyway.
The other cat, Little Odo, was a Peter Pan cat. Even though she was 18, she stayed a kitten for 17.5 of those years, but she also started to go downhill a few months back and we decided we weren’t going to subject her to the same vet treatment and when the time came we’d do the right thing by her. In the end, it never came to that. She really deteriorated one weekend, went from mainly sleeping to totally listless to ‘in and out’ in the course of a couple of days. She was booked for the vets on monday morning, I sat with her for ages on sunday night telling her she could go any time she wanted and not to wait. Eventually I went to bed at half midnight, and when the wife got up for a wee at half three she was cold and stiff. Stubborn little sod, outwaited me after all. And then to cap it, instead of curled up like she always slept, she’d decided to stretch right out, tail and all, so i couldn’t find a box big enough to put her in. I had to get a huge printer box out of the loft and even then as i tried to lower her in, had to bend her tail round to get it to fit. Witch.