Dear Prudence,
I have a 15-year-old cat named Loki. Last year he started peeing everywhere that wasn’t his litter box. We found out that he was suffering from diabetes, a manageable but costly disease. Between his medical needs and special home care when we need to travel, it is costing us more than $3,000 a year to keep him relatively healthy and cared for. We have house payments, student loans, and a 2-year-old. We’ve had to significantly rearrange our financial priorities to care for him. My husband wants to take Loki off the medication and just let nature take its course, but that idea just makes me cry. I don’t want to watch him go back to having accidents and slowly waste away over the next couple months or years. I would rather put him down, but my husband says he’s otherwise a healthy cat and we can’t. Do we suck it up financially? Let nature run its course? Or pick a day to say goodbye to our beloved family pet while he’s still feeling relatively good?
—No Good Options