Toadstool is gone. It was a long time in coming; she almost died in January and then again in May. We were living on borrowed time for a long time, and her quality of life had gone sharply downhill. In the end, we decided to stop giving her water; she was drinking it willingly but it wasn’t bringing her back and so it was only prolonging the inevitable. Last night, when we were trying to go to sleep, she was crying quite loudly from the sink (she liked it there) every 20 minutes, but we couldn’t do anything for her. So we gave her a couple of Ativan and she was peaceful through this morning. She was so peaceful that when I woke up at 5:00am and peered at her in the dark (she was in a basket on our bed at this point) I thought she was already gone. A came home to check on her around noon today, and she was almost gone. She stayed with her through the end, giving her morphine to ease her passing. She died at about 3:30pm and A arranged her in a basket (picture here) so I could see her when I got home.

She had a good long life - 16½ years. You can read her final missive at hello_grumpy. It’s quite fitting, really…that’s just what she would say.