Eight year old Warp is fading but still with us. Her stamina is amazing. She drinks enough to avoid dehydration but has no desire to eat, which is to be expected, though once in a while she takes just a few licks of a/d in water but that seems to be more to make us happy. In her final days my mother had no desire for food, either; much of this brings back those memories. We are worried that Warp may be starting to have kidney problems due to a mouth lesion. Hopefully not. We've been letting her pass at home with careful pain control because her past involved abuse and she stresses very easily so for her sake this seems to be the kinder option instead of the usual, though I can sure tell you that a protracted death-watch is incredibly difficult. One of her malignancies, likely the lymphoma, is so advanced that the sweet rot smell permeates her and we smell of it from holding her. If it starts in on something like her kidneys she will have to have a mercy shot because then the pain will be beyond what we can control with her pain meds, but we want to spare her the stress since she is so upset by males other than Steve or Joe now that if we sit with her by the tv we've taken to watching it without sound (so she is usually with us for other things like writing computer messages), but there isn't time for tv unless we are sitting with her, anyway, though we are letting ourselves have about a half hour of comedy each night because we just plain need it. She got to do her nighttime "Trick Daddy" three times last night. Two of the times she was so tired she settled in to sleep with him. The first time she decided that his nose would be a good pillow (He was on his side.) and just laid her head on his nose and nodded off. I still pretend that she has a wonderful bakery smelling belly for her and do big belly-sniffs; she loves that. It's a very hard haul, both emotionally and physically. Am still asking folks to not write to me privately because I just don't have the time for anything but her, Steve, the other ferrets (with Sev due for surgery on Wednesday), the FHL moderation, and a few letters/posts, and that is sharing chores with Steve and doing shifts with him. Many, many thanks to the other moderators who are helping off-set some of my part of the FHL chores, and to folks who are doing archive searches and encouraging others to do so, and to the many folks who give such excellent advice for everyone daily. You have no idea how deeply I appreciate you all and the ways you help everyone. You are treasures. [Posted in FML issue 3824]