I Think My Cat is Dying

I think my cat, Jordan, is dying...

When I kicked him in the gut last night, as I like to do, he didn't respond with his normal ferocity and try to attack me, but instead sort of whimpered and spit up some blood.

Jordan, an orange tabby, is now roughly between the age of 10 and 20 years old. I bought him in college from a family who owned 13 snakes, 12 other cats, myriads of bird species, and a couple of dogs even Mike Vick would've shied away from. When I purchased him as a way to show my girlfriend how domesticated she could make me and brought him home - back to my dump of an apartment - I vowed to treat him like family. And, for the first week or 2 I did just that; feeding him and rubbing him behind the ears at least twice a week.

Jordan has been a mainstay in our family, even getting his own Christmas stocking and a food bowl. He's already outlasted another cat, the Misses, who passed on last year when her body gave way to some sort of cancer or starvation - the vet wasn't sure. Jordan likes us, I'm pretty sure, even though we've ignored the advice of his Vet to fix his cavity-filled teeth, get him medicine for his many cuts, and stop buying his food at Kwik Trip. Hey, it's $2 for a large box and the kitty on the box seems happy as all get out.

I know he likes me because he sleeps on my head at night. Sara thinks he's trying to suffocate me, as he sleeps with most of his body weight on my mouth, but I keep insisting he's only trying to keep me warm.

In the past month or so, he seems to really be heading for that proverbial "hole in the gravel pit behind our Apple Valley House which I've already started to dig". He's stopped covering his own shit, leaving that for his younger sister of a cat, the Misses 2, to cover up. He's got some blood in his stool, which is probably just hemorrhoids or something benign. He's coughing up weird hair balls which don't have as much hair as before and seem to be made up of blood and stomach tissue. He's not eating well. I've tried to up his intake by feeding him a couple times a week, but he doesn't seem to want it.

When he goes, it's going to be sad. Not so much for me, but for him, as he'll be going through a lot of pain and won't be able to convey, at least in human form, what I could do to help him through it. "Meow, meow, meow," he'll whine, pleading with me to mercifully end his life, but I won't get it. I'll assume he's thanking me for leaving him alone all these years. I'm going to do what I think is best for him and let him decay slowly, as I know he wants to enjoy all the minutes he has left in this world, and when he really starts to fade away and smell like hell, I'll grant him his one last wish and throw him outside, to hunt, gather, and rot away in peace - for a few weeks on his own.

Good luck, Jordan... you'll need it.