Our parents, in-laws, aunts and uncles are dropping like flies. Rarely two weeks go by without my hearing about someone’s relative finally giving up or giving in and leaving for good. In most cases, this is good. I know how cold and heartless this sounds, but none of us lives forever, and in the great majority of these cases, the soon-to-be-deceased are more than ready to go. I grew up around the aged and aging and am also generally inured to approaching death and lingering grief. My friends are inured—nearly—to an inevitable, "She was eighty-eight? Well..." or "He was a smoker? Well..." No surprises. Death comes to the old, the sick, and the careless.

But yesterday, when I found a suspicious lump on our cat’s hip, I froze. "Found a suspicious lump" is always the beginning of a bad story. Frances was standing on a stainless steel table in the veterinarian’s examining room before the end of the day. Shaking from the chill, but otherwise perfectly fine, the cat was now reduced to "DSH/SF"—domestic shorthair, spayed female. "Calico" showed up as a further entry. Well, she’s striped, not patched.

Before the end of the visit, we were talking about end-of-life issues: "I support you, no matter what you decide." The veterinarian knelt down beside my chair and took my hand; she aimed at compassion but hit mawkishness. O.K. It's my decision, and this caring woman will support me. I had no idea of what that could mean—she’d comp the costs of surgery? She’d talk me through those last days? And what issues are those connected to the end of a cat's life? Only one: How long does a responsible, ethical person allow a creature with limited intellect suffer? We have no laws, no limitations, nothing on the books—on any books—to give us a hand.

At the moment, the cat felt perfectly fine—at least as far as we or the veterinarian could tell. And had we not known that Frances was harboring a vaccine-induced sarcoma, we would have had no cause to consider illness, let alone need to think through when to stop it all.

It’s one thing when it’s a friend’s mother-in-law: In spite of my apparent disinterest, by the time the undertaker is notified, I have predictably heard decades of complaints about the woman’s character, years of concerns about her health, and weeks or months of exasperating reports of GI problems, co-mingled meds, and regular outbreaks of long-suppressed rage. Let them go. The arguments among the family over the will and whom the deceased loved best or which son- or daughter-in-law she disapproved of most inevitably become an easy trade for it’s just being "over."

But this is my family, now, and it’s all different. My mother died in the moment of a heartbeat, my father suffered a lingering death thousands of miles away, estranged from his family. I had neither opportunity nor responsibility to contend with those last breathing moments. I’ll be honest: I have a collateral relative here and there I’d just as soon be without. Frances, on the other hand, has been a comfortable friend over her thirteen years, first as an entertainingly curious kitten, then as a well-meaning and generous provider of dead mice and voles, now as a lion-hearted surgery survivor, uncomplaining about losing part of her hip and a chunk of muscle—although all she knows is that mice are harder to bring in these days.

"Thirteen?" a friend said. "Well…" Well, nothing. She has more than paid for her Fancy Feast and clumpable cat litter simply by keeping me warm at night and encouraging me to nap in the sun without guilt.

Now I need to make a decision: unlike the situation with, let’s say, my cranky aunt Irma, I actually have the power to say, "Enough," and pull the plug—or ask someone to push the syringe. I’m not sure I’m up to that. But I guess I have to be. Even with the radical surgery from which Frances is now recovering, I know I’ll have to make a hard decision before very long—two years, at most. It’s not likely now that she’ll be carried off by a coyote—an ongoing concern of ours for most of her life—or hit by an automobile driven by one of those aging citizens who should not be behind the wheel. Frances has no dependents; no one will argue over what she’ll leave behind; she is not writing a novel, whose ending she might be able to get to with an extra month, or two, "writing through the pain."

She won’t be able to tell us that she just hurts too much to take another step—and she’ll probably just keep trying to take one.

I’ll have to call the veterinarian to come over, finally, so Frances can take an endless nap. And I’ll have to find a way not to feel guilty about that.