We lost little Spoke this morning.
At midnight, she was lumbering around our room, but still mobile. All night, she kept crawling around the bed, trying to get under anything. Every ten minutes she let out of this piercing, yet weak by her standards meow. I would stroke her for a minute to soothe her. Her little head was the only thing that she was not uncomfortable with being touched. By 4am, she had crawled under by pillow, still meowing, and and comically wedged herself between the mattress and the headboard. Upon inspection, she had peed on me as I expected, and when I went to move her... We discovered she had lost all use of her limbs. So we held her, wrapped in a series of towels, and pet her little head until the vet arrived early this morning to put her down. Two day ago, she was splashing around in the laundry room sink. This morning, couldn't even move. Never seen anything like it. We believe it to be kidney failure.
My throat hurts from all my blubbering. My wife is crushed. Watching it all happen in real time makes me sick to my stomach. She didn't even get one last day of chasing a laser, oh a pile of smoked salmon. She was just done.
She was a great cat, but didn't have the best past two years. Her hyperthyroidism I think lopped of quite a few years at the end. The volatility of her weight before- and while- medicated, inconsistent appetite, and progressed age... She never was the same. She was never anything like this, but she lost about six steps and got back maybe two. Her last panel was all good, everything was fine on paper.
And even with her UTI three years ago, which we treated promptly, she would never venture too far from the little box. She never had crystals again, but had been saddled with an overactive bladder.
12 years of killing birds and rats, scaling fences, destroying my couches... It all just started falling apart after 2018.

We'll miss you, Spoke.