We've lost two pets over the past year.
The first was my dog, Mr. Bones. No telling how old he was--when I got him from a shelter he was already at least 8-10 years old. He was a lovable, if occasionally ornery, little shih tzu. He actually choked on a piece of rawhide (please, don't let your dogs have the ones with the knots on the end, that's what did it) about six months earlier, in the middle of the night--for some reason I was up reading a book at 2 am and heard something that didn't sound right, and found him choking in the living room. Thought he was having a seizure (he had had them before), but when he went limp and his lips started turning blue, we checked his airway and found the rawhide. Managed to bring him back with some mouth-to-nose and chest compressions, but he was never quite the same. He started getting very aggressive with everyone but me, and frequently disoriented. His kidneys started to fail too--that's what ultimately did him in. He was down to less than 10% kidney function when I had to make the decision to have him put to sleep.
Second was our cat Fyodor. My wife had had him for 13 years and he seemed like he was in perfect health. We noticed he was lethargic and had a swollen spot in his mouth, so had the vet look at him and he extracted two teeth. A few days later, he was still really lethargic so we had them x-ray his mouth; turned out he had cancer & half his jaw was already gone. My wife had to put him to sleep right there--she couldn't even bring him home to say goodbye.
The happy ending is our cat Lucy. We have an 8 ft high fence around our yard, and Lucy liked to lay out in the sun but never ever tried to get out. One day, she was gone. No idea to this day how she got out, she's also 13 and arthritic so no way she jumped the fence. We put up signs and looked for her for days, but it rained nonstop and we had no sign of her so we assumed the worst. On top of that, we then left town for a week to visit a sick relative; my brother-in-law drove over from Fort Worth to Frisco several times to look for her, but still no luck. Then, when we got back, a little girl from the neighborhood called and told us she'd seen Lucy in the gutter a couple blocks over. We searched them all but didn't see her. Dropped food down there daily, and dirty pillowcases (so they'd smell like us), but couldn't see how an old housecat could survive in the gutter for two weeks. We didn't give up, and finally, my wife spotted Lucy down the drain. She was able to barely reach her and pull her up & out and, other than losing a pound and being a little freaked out, she survived the whole ordeal, amazingly.
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