A Hard Goodbye, letting Nonami go. Options

[Umber-K]

I have a hard time talking to people about my issues and recently the loss of my cat has made things exceptionally hard.

Nonami was a beautiful smokey grey Mainecoon mix with bright green eyes. He always seemed to get into some sort of trouble, at about 4 years old he got herpes in his eye, or so the doctor thought. He lost a tooth around 6 years old and finally at about 8 years old he was diagnosed with diabetes. We noticed something was wrong when he lost more than the normal amount of winter fat, his hair started falling out in clumps and his eyes remained extremely clouded despite putting eye medication in. We found the diabetes with insulin, two times a day increasing the dose every week to combat his high blood glucose levels. He got better for about a year and a half and luckily his eye cloudiness went away with it (perhaps the eye cloudiness was a begining stage of diabetes and I missed it all these years). He had regular testing and many blood tests, urine test and even a few ultrasounds to see what could be causing such high BG levels. No tumor, all his tests were coming out normal, nothing. My vet summed up that perhaps he had a very rare condition where high insulin shots wouldnt hurt him (since it can hurt the body even if its not helping much) but the test to actually find that out was too expensive. He seemed fine for a while until he started getting extremely matted due to not grooming himself, he would laze around the house, his stomach was always bloated and hard despite a high protein diet and he began peeing in odd locations. The peeing was resolved with antibiotics as he had a UTI but everything else stayed the same. The vet had little answer to it as everything checked out fine besides his high BG levels. About a month or two later he began peeing in weird places again, he was getting slow, not caring to go outside anymore, we finally put him down.

I feel guilt for putting my cat to sleep, we fought his diabetes for two years and it was unrelenting on his body... I wonder if perhaps if I could do the expensive testing maybe something would have been found out to help him?... Was I being selfish for keeping him alive for as long as I did because I fought so hard to keep him alive? A lot of what-ifs have been running through my mind since that day.. he was put down on his birthday which I also feel guilty for but he was going down hill, the only time he was excited was when he was fed or given extra long scratches.. Every little thought of the rainbow bridge, talking of others cats, seeing sad pet images, being alone or hearing a sad song makes me tear up because I wonder could things have been different. I dont know if I should feel guilty or not...