Soon I will actually be caught up and possibly commenting on current stories! (Actually being on a few weeks behind isn't too bad, I think.)
This one made my morning commute a bit difficult, but at least I made it to the end before I really started crying, although I was pretty much expecting this result. We're in the very end stage of kidney disease with one of our cats - probably less than a few weeks, maybe even less than that. She's not the first pet I've lost, nor will she be close to the last, but damn each time is like having my heart torn out ... and I know I'm going to just get back in line to have it happen again.
I have to wonder, with pets that can live forever, what happens to the ones that need homes? The shelters are pretty full even today, what would they look like in this scenario?
The end points on the spectrum of lifespan shown here was interesting to me. Pets designed to be short-lived, where the intention was to do nothing and watch them die vs. ones that were effectively immortal, but may not really be living in a technical sense anymore. I know many times, we've had to make a choice about how much to do to try to prolong a life and I kept thinking about that. How much should we put something (or someone) we love though, just so they can live a little longer?