Here come the waterworks again. Just when I think I'm going to be able to make it through an hour without shedding a tear, a fresh wave comes on. I'm kind of hoping writing about this will make me feel better. So here goes.

Before I left last week I noticed a hot spot on Pasha's behind. This was nothing shocking to me. Back in 2004 she had a sunburst on her hip that turned out to be an anal rupture - which I heartily joked about, saying it sounded like a porn industry occupational hazard. She had to have surgery and the vet warned me, "In a way this is the beginning of the end. When a cat's anal glands can't clean themselves out anymore, it's not a good sign." And it's not that I didn't pay attention to the vet when he said it. More that I just didn't want to hear him. Pasha has been such a staple in my life that I didn't want to imagine my world without her.

16 years ago an underminer-friend's cat became pregnant and she promised me one of the kittens. I was living in a little one-bedroom apartment in Calgary and plotting my eventual escape, but I really missed having a pet, considering I'd grown up around dogs and cats all my life. I got to see the kittens right after they were born and picked her out of the litter. She was pure white and fit in the palm of my hand. The underminer told me, "You can't have her until she's six weeks - she needs to stay with her mother."

At the end of week five I got a phone call: "Come get your cat before I throw her off the balcony."

"Why, what's the matter?"

"She keeps deliberately pooping in my bed."

I smiled. That's my girl, I thought as I put on my shoes, musing at how funny karma can be. I walked the two blocks to the underminer's house, picked up my new baby and carried her home in my arms. Her eyes - ice blue - were panicked, though she never tried to squirm away. But she did mew all the way home and spent most of the first night under the couch.

I was having a problem naming her for a while. I couldn't come up with anything until the day a friend of mine was flipping through a Cartier catalog and came across a ballpoint pen that was encased in 24k gold, decorated in diamonds, rubies and emeralds. It was the only item in the catalog that didn't have a price. So he called, and - in his best nouveau-riche voice - asked how much it was. The answer? $25,000. It was called the Pasha pen. And suddenly, I had a name for my kitten.

I'll never forget when I finally took her to the vet to get fixed at six months. The vet took one look at her and asked me, "Is she deaf?"

"Selectively," I snarked. "Why?"

"It's characteristic of cats who are white with blue eyes to be deaf."

"She hears just fine unless it's the word 'no,'" I told him. And that's something that's true to this day.

When I started moving all over the world, there was no question in my mind that she was coming with me. When I moved from Calgary to Toronto, she sat on my lap and slept the entire three-day drive across the country. When I moved from Toronto to San Francisco, I left her to stay with my hairdresser for two months while I got situated, and sent for her later. She was so mad at me when I finally picked her up from the airport that she wouldn't meow or purr, but refused to leave my lap even for a second (try sitting on the toilet and doing your business with an insolent kitty on top of you.) San Francisco to L.A. was next, and she took it all in stride. As long as I was there, she knew wherever she was equaled home.

So when the vet told me that it was the beginning of the end in 2004, I smiled and nodded and pretended I hadn't heard him. And when she had another rupture in 2006, I told myself we could just keep getting her drained and everything would be okay. Then it happened again in 2007. Lather, rinse, repeat. So when I saw the lump in her butt last week, I thought we'd just go to the vet and get it drained, and that would be that.

He refused. Said it couldn't be done, and furthermore, that cats don't get this kind of thing. He sent me home with antibiotics and told me if it didn't clear in 10 days that I should bring her back. So I left her in the care of some friends and took off to Montana, and by the time I came home she had a new lump on her butt the size of a baby's fist.

I took her in again, and the new vet I saw had no idea what the old vet was talking about - "This is the second anal abscess on a cat that I've seen tonight," she told me. She put Pasha under local anesthesia and drained the lumps, shot her full of goo to help them heal, gave her pain killers, and told me she did a blood panel and a urinalysis. "Just in case, because she's old," she said.

But she's not, I wanted to say. She's still the same size that she was at six months old. She runs and jumps like she's two. She still makes cooing noises like a pigeon and headbutts me to wake me up in the morning and she still thinks she's the great white hunter, but can't catch a fly to save her life. She's still the same cat she always has been. She's not old.

The test results came in the next day. She has renal disease. It's not to the point of renal failure, but she's still in jeopardy. The doctor outlined her treatment plan, which included IV drips that would run me $800 to $1200 a pop, or - if I chose to do it at home - thrice a week treatments and weekly visits to the vet for blood drawing and blood pressure monitoring. "This will be something you'll have to do for the rest of her life," the vet told me.

"How long will that be?"

"It's hard to say," she said. "Maybe a year?"

A year. A year of drips and weekly vet visits and watching her wither away... which she's already been doing, losing two pounds in the last year. As my brain scrambled to think of a way to get the money together, a quiet voice in my head asked, Who would you be doing this for? Her, or you?

I hate the answer to that question.

Of course it's me. Of course I don't want her to go - I'm in no way ready for that. I don't want to go to sleep without her on my chest, burying her face into my arm. I don't want to wake up without the March of Love across my shoulders, and her paw pulling at my elbow in insistence that I pet her. I don't want to pack for another trip and not have her defiantly sit in my suitcase with a look on her face that says, "You are the worst mother ever. I HATE YOU."

I don't want to make this decision. But by the same token, she's not eating. She's been drinking a ton of water, and it never seems to be enough. She's been having litter box issues for at least the last six months, and though I chalked it up to changing her food, I think I knew it was something else when I could feel her ribs when I pet her. She's been a bit lethargic. Still happy, but not the same spark. I know if it were me I wouldn't want to wait until things got really bad and painful. I'd want out before it got that bad. DNR.

Yesterday afternoon I laid on the bed with her and pet her, scratching her chin and neck beneath the e-collar. She walked around me a little and flopped over, not having enough energy to rabbit kick me as I rubbed her little belly. I asked her, "Is this it, baby? Are you ready to go?" She got up and pressed her head into my hand, then stepped onto my chest where she curled into a ball, and stretched her paws outward to rest them on my shoulders. Then she put one on my mouth and let me kiss it - she hates to be kissed. She was purring. And I started a fresh wave of tears.

I'm not ready to do this yet. My momentary plan is to keep an eye on her over the next month or so and see how she does, but at the moment I'm pretty sure this is my last summer with her. She's had an incredible 16 years with me. I love her more than anything I've ever known. She's traveled the world with me, seen me through four major heartbreaks, nursed me when I've been sick, loved me even when I've yelled at her, tested my boundaries, taught me patience, made me laugh my ass off, been the first face I see in the morning and the last face I see at night before I go to sleep, seen me off when I left and welcomed me home when I returned, and shown me that the littlest creatures can make the biggest difference in your life. I need a little more time to say goodbye and let her know how much she's meant to me.

I think that's all I have to say for now.