Message posted by Dr. Baker regarding Mike's final days

To all of Mike's friends, thank you for your love and concern for him, and for your prayers and support for his medical team. We all felt undergirded by you. Many have asked what happened to accelerate our timetable for Mike's euthanasia. Over the weekend, he took a turn for the worse. He became very lethargic, largely lost his appetite, and showed little interest in interacting with us. However, my greater concerns were: 1) as cats are prone to do, there could come a point where he just felt so badly that he might never reenter his night house, but instead go somewhere in his yard and just languish and die. In fact, this seemed quite likely. We could not allow that to happen. 2) he began bleeding quite a bit from his nose, indicating that the tumor was causing a lot of damage to his sinus cavity. We could not allow that to go on because it would eventually lead to his suffering. I am sorry for those of you who were not able to see Mike VI before he transitioned into hospice care Saturday night but I simply could not risk letting him back out into his yard and then not being able to bring him back inside for care. While we probably could have nursed him along for perhaps another few weeks or even a month, that would not have been in Mike's best interest. As you know, Mike's well-being was always our sole and complete concern. You might be comforted to know that even after receiving his anesthetic this morning, Mike VI was "chuffing" at all of us. This tells me that while he felt poorly, he was not yet suffering. As I promised, we would not allow that to happen. It also showed me that he trusted us to the end to care for him so that's what we did. Thanks again.