The Hailey Chronicles: Saying Goodbye

Get ready to cry, y’all, because this story is a sad one. πŸ™ (TW: pet death) One week ago, we had to say goodbye to our sweet furbaby Hailey. I’ve talked about her before. She had kidney disease. We were taking her to the vet three times a week for fluids and had her on a regimen of medication to keep her comfortable and functioning well, as she was nearing nineteen and a half. We knew her time was coming to an end β€” but by the beginning of this year, she was still mostly stable. Her bloodwork looked okay β€” not fantastic, because kidney disease, but not horrendous, either β€” and she still had fight in her. She’d still play, get on my mother’s lap, eat, drink, get on our kitchen table when we cooked to try to get scraps (or, spend time with her favorite humans), and hung out with me when I worked at night, often battling me to be allowed to walk on my keyboard. Damn, she loved it. It’s backlit in a rainbow of colors, which I think was the attraction. I have several Google Sheets that she’d completely bork if she did her little stroll across it, so there was always this panicked, “No, Hailey, no!” thing with me grabbing her gently and placing her next to my computer, encouraging her to just sit there and let me pet her instead. Sometimes it worked, and I’d work one handed, petting her with my free…

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