My cat was euthanised 3 days ago and I am experiencing immense guilt over the circumstances, but I have been trying to have helpful thoughts [see end for these], and maybe they can help you. I am deep in grief and heart break and it will definitely help me to share this (apologies for the indulgence).
LONG STORY: My situation is different in that I am haunted because I did not go with all of the treatment options available. I know too well the feeling that you have described about wanting to go back in time - it is a horrifically painful feeling. My cat, Bella, came into my life 1.5 years ago, aged 12, via my partner (of 3 years) who has had her for 7 years. She had had IBS/IBD symptoms as long as he had known her - regular bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea, and associated behavioural issues of going to the toilet on soft furnishings. I have no experience as a cat mum, having previously had dogs, and I did not want to adopt her due to my personal circumstances. However, she was living with partner's mum who could not cope with her anymore.
One day, Bella looked me in the eyes and miaowed at me, in her depression (as she was not enjoying her living circumstances), and in that instant I decided she was coming to live with me. Her digestive symptoms of vomiting and diarrhoea were tolerable in the first several months, and she seemed well. I fell in love with her and our bond was magical - she loved being fussed and I loved fussing her. Some months later I started to feel her symptoms were increasing and I noticed a little blood in her poop. I took her to the vet in around end of March and we got blood tests + poop samples done in April. Everything came back fine and I discussed with the vet that, given her longstanding history, her current symptoms, and her test results, I thought she had IBD and asked if we can start treating her for it. The vet said we could do a scan to confirm it's IBD or we could go ahead and treat her for the IBD.
We also were told she needed £900 worth of dental work, meaning we were already more than £1000 into our costs for her, and her health at this point was not too bad, and appeared more like an IBD flare up than anything. I actually felt proud of myself for finally addressing the IBD situation - I had no thought that this was something more life-threatening. We put her on probiotics and steroids for a month, but the only improvement was that we didn't see blood anymore. I took the elimination of the blood to mean that the steroids were reducing inflammation from the IBD. A cat was added to our household due to other circumstances, and we noticed some stress behaviours from Bella such as guarding doorways and food bowls. At the same time, we felt the steroids had mixed effects in that, while we no longer saw blood in her poop, we thought she was having more diarrhoea and her vomit was more violent, although perhaps slightly less frequent.
I decided to give the steroids a little bit longer to have an effect, and we were trying her on a hypoallergenic diet too, which she didn't exactly embrace.She was eating other food enthusiastically, so she didn't have the appetite loss that is normally listed as a lymphoma symptom. In the meantime, we had booked her dental appointment. This came around on 7th July, but at the appointment the vet told us she had lost almost a third of her weight and she needed to go for the scan. I felt shocked - I hadn't noticed how thin she had got (she's long-haired), and I felt awful. Once it was pointed out to me, I felt it was so obvious and yet I hadn't seen it before. I felt sick. I stopped the steroids for her because we decided they were causing more discomfort for her when she vomited.
The scan was booked for 2 weeks' time, and during those 2 weeks her health declined daily. At the scan on Monday 24th July they found a mass in her intestines and she would need a biopsy to determine if it was cancer, but everything pointed to it being that. We booked a vet appointment for Thursday 27th July, and in the meantime, with information from the vet and online, we realised that, due to the state of her health, the kindest thing to do would be to euthanise her as she had little to no hope of improving, and further surgical interventions would be hard on her. The vet said that it most likely was lymphoma which, in the intestines, has mostly a poor prognosis but, especially so since Bella didn't tolerate the steroids, which would have formed part of her treatment for lymphoma.
Since euthanising her I've felt tremendous guilt and horror that I delayed getting the scan at the start, and I've been going over and over what the different outcomes may have been. Essentially, it seems that she was destined to die this year and the main question is about how she should have died. Now that I know she had a tumour, I believe she was in more pain than she let on. The last few days were terrible because she did go downhill enough that it was evident she was in pain, and I completely understand the trauma you're referring to when you describe watching your cat in pain and that all you could do it talk to her and soothe her. I've been questioning why the vet did not strongly advise me that she should get the scan at the start, rather than letting me make an ignorant decision - she even said she agreed with me that it likely was IBD/IBS given her symptoms. I've since done research and realise that this is an incorrect interpretation of the test results etc. and the advice. Overall, I understand that Bella's time had run out and I'm mostly upset because I wish we could have put her on palliative care.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS (?): as furbaby parents all we want to do is protect our furbabies from suffering, and we want to show them the absolute best life possible. But as humans it is a fallacy to believe we can control nature that way. We will make decisions to the best of our abilities, with the best of intentions, and having us to do this for them makes our furbaby's suffering in life far less than it would be if nature took its course. Had you not been in your kitty's life to try to extend it with surgery, and she was left to nature, she would have died at a much slower rate, with far more prolonged pain, and without the support and comfort that you provided her. You intervened in her life to protect her from the cruelty of nature, and you DID. But humans are a part of nature and this means that we CANNOT perfectly prevent all pain/illness/suffering at all times. Nature designed death to be painful and cruel, and we try to fight this where we can, but we are limited. We are not responsible for the fact that illness occurs, and that they are mysterious and unpredictable - we would never choose this for our pets, or even us. I have done lots of research since Bella died and I have found online vets who say that intestinal lymphoma is treatable, and others who say it has a very poor prognosis. There are vets who lean towards hope, and others who are more 'realistic'. There are those with more experience or expertise. I've seen cases where cats were treated for certain lymphoma and beat all the odds, but these are described as 'miracles' - yet had their parents not opted to try, these miracles would not have happened. We are tasked with a tremendously difficult challenge of choosing treatment options for animals when we can't communicate with them about what they need and want. We must acknowledge our limitations and we must find peace in that we made decisions out of love. Those of you still reading this, and myself included, will likely experience some pain in our deaths, too. We MUST accept the cycle of good health to bad health, and be prepared for this experience when we love others, especially pets because we are often left with so many questions. We do not have ultimate control over pain and suffering - we are very limited. To move on from our grief, guilt and trauma in this bereavement experience, we must accept our limitations and we must surrender to the facts of nature. Nature is vast and monstrous, and all we can do is try. Your cat and my cat were more comfortable than they ever would have been had we not been there to do our best for them. The 'what ifs' are horrendously painful, and it's important that we let them go because nature has taken its course in both of our stories, including the human nature of us trying our best. X