We faced that awful last trip to the Vet about 2 months ago and to be honest, I think we waited 4 days too long.

Our beautiful blue Burmese girl, Sapphire, was 18 when she was diagnosed with a gastrointestinal lymphoma. She had chemotherapy and went into remission for a few months and then started to go downhill quite rapidly. She lost a lot of weight quite quickly and then she had an episode of bowel leakage with blood in it. She was in hospital for about a week on a drip and recovered from the bowel infection which caused the leakage but would barely eat and started losing weight again. We took her to the Vet and he gave her a steroid injection which he said would either give her a bounce or not and if it didn't we had to face the fact that it was time. This was a Tuesday and he suggested an appointment for the Saturday. We force fed her a bit for the last few days. She wanted to eat but couldn't manage it. She would lap at water but none was getting in. But she still purred and wanted to be hugged at night and managed to make her way to the table when we had dinner as was her habit. I knew that Saturday would be her final trip but in the middle of the night early on the Saturday morning she tried to get up to go to the litter tray but couldn't stand.

For the last few weeks of her life we had towels everywhere she liked to sleep because she was still having a bit of bowel leakage.

Once she couldn't stand at all we knew it was time - in fact I regretted leaving it for the four days because it was very distressing for her and us to see her like that.

Our Vet could not have been better. I held her in my arms and my partner sat beside me and stroked her head. The Vet gave her a mild sedative to relax her and then the 'green dream' injection. He said to us that her last moment would be spent knowing that she was being held and loved. That gave us some comfort.

zoom-zoom, I know only too well what a tough decision it is and only you can know when it is time. In our case I think we put our little cat through more suffering than was necessary because we weren't brave enough to make the decision earlier.