[Coda]

My cat passed away today...

He was 17 years old, so he'd had a very long life. But about five weeks ago I rushed him to the ER because he was gasping for breath. It turns out he had 40mL of fluid in his chest cavity. The vet drained it out and gave us some medication to treat the problem. After a couple days he seemed to have recovered, and it even seemed like he was gaining weight. He seemed to be in a good mood, very affectionate, and his appetite was improving.

Then a couple days ago, he was having labored breathing again. We took him back to a different vet (because his main vet was unavailable) and they drained off another 65mL of fluid and gave us a different medication that was supposed to work better. We brought him home and took care of him like before -- he had taken a couple days before he really recovered from the first one, so I wasn't too worried.

But then today when I got up this morning he didn't have any appetite at all and he was already back to breathing heavily. That concerned me, so we went back to the vet again. This time they drained 150mL... more than the first two combined, and only in two days instead of weeks. They gave him a steroid shot to try to deal with the inflammation in hopes that it would give him the strength to finish recovering, but... it wasn't enough, and he passed earlier this evening.