This morning I looked at the syringes of insulin, pedialyte, and mashed up food and oil. Kept the insulin but emptied the others and gave her tuna for breakfast. She's purring now, having eaten her fill and cuddling my foot. Likely she's wondering what brought this on, this sudden sanity on the part of the talky one, to have finally given her what she wants. It's complicated. What's brought this on is the gift of 11 years on her part to us when we got her as a 5 yr old rescue. Crapping in the beds of room mates who didn't pull their weight - what land lady has had a more brutal enforcer? Ruining 8 takes in the studio in a row when she worked out what the record light meant, and that noise in the stick came back out the boxes. Playing with echoes while sliding into rooms, or piling plastic bags just so to make a toilet. Sitting up at the table and demanding a plate, purring us to sleep on troubled nights, herding me toward the sofa and placing a paw on my lap once I'm sitting to stop the pacing. Tuna for breakfast is the least I can do. Fabulous husband will likely give her tinned oysters for lunch. She's dying anyway, and the palliative lessons I've learned over the last five years of volunteer work are these: eliminate all reachable pain, fulfill all attainable dreams, keep them laughing hour by hour.
Update - vet is on vacation this week but taking and returning our calls - she's ruined his golf game with the wound she gave him last weekend, so he's got her on his mind too. I am perversly proud of her.