Remember this little furball?

We took her in when she was 7 months old. She was found on the street at 2 months old, so she was incredibly shy when got her. She was hiding every second of the next few days/weeks/months, only coming out at night when we were asleep, inside a locked living room to keep the other cats from interfering in her taking a bite to eat. Eventually she opened up, which took a lot of petting and scratching behind the ears. At first, she appeared to say "stay away from me" by biting my fingers every once in a while, but after a while she started to rub back against my hand.

She never got over her shyness towards humans. She wouldn't let anyone pick her up, and stroking her belly was out of the question, so if we ever went on vacation and we had to take all our cats to the animal shelter, catching her was the hardest task. She could find every way to hide herself so that grabbing her was impossible, and drugging her with sleeping pills made her drowsy once, but she learned keep an eye on her food ever since.

As time went by, she and I formed a little bond with each other. I was the first to ever pet her using two hands, she would sometimes sleep on my bed, and when it was storming outside, she would hide next to me on the couch, pressing her body against mine. Even so, she would always keep one or both of her eyes open whenever she was being pet.

After building a cat tree for our cats, she would always be on the top basket, looking out as if she ruled over us. If she had fallen asleep or was about to doze off, and you'd call out to her, she would roll over on her back and mewl to me, and only me. If my mom did that, she'd look back as if to say "yeah, hi and stuff". I bought her a laser pointer after that which she adored to death. Whenever I used it, she would run over near me and wait for the mysterious red dot to appear on the floor. Eventually she found out it was me who made it appear, but even so, she would run over to me and look up at me with those adorable eyes of hers, then look down and waited for me to start playing, eagerly raising and shaking her behind like a true hunter would.

Why am I telling you this?

Last week my mom noticed that she'd been losing a little weight. We kept an eye out for her whenever we fed her to see if she would eat properly, and nothing appeared to be wrong, because the other cats would often drive her away to eat out of her bowl. But then my mom felt a little lump in her belly, so on Friday we decided to take her to the vet. The vet took some samples of her blood, and told us we would get the diagnosis today. But since she's so shy, catching her was still difficult, and after returning home, she'd go hide in my closet, only coming out whenever she was being fed or wanted to eat something.

Today, my mom called out vet for answers. Mahjong appears to have Feline Leukemia. Which is incurable. On top of that, she might have a small tumor, which would be the small lump in her belly.

I haven't been able to keep my eyes dry since hearing this news, especially since my mom's already talking about having her put to sleep. She's so beautiful and I love her so much, but I don't want her to suffer unnecessarily. And I want to be there when she is put to sleep, but I can't bear to watch her slowly fade away. It breaks my heart when she doesn't even seem to respond to the laser pointer anymore, except for the occasional half-hearted attempt she gave me this morning. Right now we need to test a little bit more of her blood to see if it is infectious towards our other cats as well..

We're planning on framing some pictures of her to remember her by, and I'm even thinking of letting her get cremated, so that she would always be with us even after she's gone. I try to keep my mind off of it all, but she's been there each morning for the past 8 and a half years, always happy to say hi..

We've lost a few cats in the past, don't get me wrong, but they either get hit by a car or never return, and for some reason that's not as bad as watching the life go out in her eyes.

I have such a big sad right now...