Allegra's been sliding slowly downhill over the past year due to the kidney failure, but in the past few weeks it feels as if this thing has picked up its pace. She is so thin now, and her face looks old. She still falls over and trills a greeting when she sees me and she still wants to be held, especially when I am trying to do anything else, but I cannot remember the last time she raced around the house for her daily snit. These days she mostly just sleeps, curled into a tiny ball somewhere warm. And we are deliberately leaving out blankets and making places for her, just to make sure she can find whatever works best for her.

We have a new medication to give her that is supposed to help make her feel a little better � assuming I could convince her to take it willingly. They originally gave it to me in liquid form, but she immediately made it clear she considered it foul and poisonous (the foaming at the mouth was a dead giveaway as to that opinion) so the vet found someone who could compound it for us into capsules. She�ll only get to try them out for a few days, however, because Thursday we leave for DragonCon, and while I�ve talked my dad into giving her her daily fluids, I am not sadistic enough to ask anyone else to try to feed her or give her the pills. And I am also logical enough, despite my not wanting to admit it, that at this point a few days with or without the new pills are not really going to make one bit of difference in the end.

At night she comes up to crawl into the bed beside me, and there she stays, most of the night. So there I stay too, sometimes in one cramped and awkward position most of the night so as to avoid disturbing her, because I realize that time is precious with her now, and I want very much to bend over backwards and keep her warm and happy and safe, and most of all I want to somehow find a way to turn back the clock on her failing organs so she will get better instead of worse. Because we are no longer counting months with her, and I am not so sure we are even counting weeks. I strongly suspect that for her we are down to counting days - not until she dies, but until I am strong enough to call the vet to come out and put her to sleep.