We had to say goodbye to Merry on Tuesday. She had a good run of it, but her health issues were compounding, and she took a serious turn on the weekend. She'd been in and out of the vet lately, and each visit stressed her out more than the one before. We've known for awhile that she was on borrowed time. We might have been able to get her another year or two if we'd shipped her off to Saskatoon for a month for radiation therapy for her thyroid.
The keyword is "might".
There was no guarantee that it would fix her thyroid (the tumour was too aggressive for medication), and even if it did, she had other issues piling up alongside it. Also, we have no idea what cat we would get back after she spent a month in a vet the next province over. She was never quite the same after just spending two days at the office down the street from us.
We brought in a home service to send her on her way so that she would be as stress-free as possible at the end. Cats are more attached to their place than to their people, so she got to leave this world in familiar surroundings.
We are utterly crushed. She was a wonderful cat.