New Member-dying Support, I can't believe this is happening again! Options

[doveslanding]

We lost our heart, our beautiful sweet chihuahua, Chiqui, on Jan. 30 of this year. We didn't give a care about losing our home to Katrina as long as we 2-legged people and our 5-4 legged friends were o.k. But then we lost Chiqui, and now it looks like we our about to lose another friend, Big Boy, our 17 year old solid white cat with beautiful green eyes. He's more like a dog than a cat, because whenever I'd walk the dogs, he'd trail in behind us. He's totally declawed, neutered and still scares all the dogs in the neighborhood: Rottwielers, German Shepherds, Labadors, you name it, he's run it off.

But I noticed that he'd been sleeping a lot lately, and for some reason there was this weird stench in the garage. I looked and looked because I thought he or Little Girl, our other cat had killed something and dragged it into the garage. When I couldn't find it, I started checking him out. Besides finding that he only has 5 teeth left, I found a REALLY BAD wound on his back paw that had sealed two of his toe together. My heart just sank; if it smelled that bad it could only be one thing -gangrene.

This cats been with us through 3 moves, 3 hurricanes-he's almost been with us as long as we've been married. I mean, COME ON, in less than a year, we've lost my grandmother who lived with us 5 years, my husband's mom, our house, and 2 of our pets? I don't think I can take another blow or I'll find some sackcloth and climb up in what's left of our fireplace (literally)!

I know we've taken the best of care of him or he would've have never lived to be 17. And maybe I'm taking this so hard because all the the other losses magnify it. But that's not going to stop how bad I miss him