If love and positive thinking and having so many people rooting for you were enough, this little girl would be the cat that got the cream and then some... sadly, Salt made her last journey to the vets this morning and is now climbing up curtains and hiding under cupboards in our dreams instead. After a weekend when we felt we may be starting to see real progress: lots of eating, lots of purring, more walking around, coming over to see us when we went into spare room; as well as more time spent downstairs with the rest of us, the large belly we spotted on Saturday got worse... We realized, after talking to the vet (Kate) on Monday, that it was almost definitely water retention. Steroids can of course cause water retention so we decided not to give her the second evening tablet, although Kate felt it was actually unlikely the steroids were causing this, due to both the low dosage and the short time Salt had been on them.
Other things were going wrong too: her appetite began to decrease again and whilst her respiratory rate was still around 30/40, her breathing became more laboured and also, at times, very noisy.
We took her to the vets this morning and Richard agreed we really had done all we could and this was the end of the road for her.
Heartbroken and somewhat guilt-ridden, we returned home where Pepper, Nay and the dogs all got lots of extra cuddles.