Many a baby boomer who has reached our age, in my case 62, has had to have a pet put down. I don’t need to tell you about the bright light in the vet’s office, and the shaved leg, and the pet struggling weakly as the light fades in its eyes.

When I was younger and varmints used to threaten my garden and chickens, I would set out a Havahart trap, and once the animal was caught I would ask Peter, my partner, to shoot it. He took such things in stride, having been a Marine, and having, in a fit of old fashioned rectitude, once shot his children’s sick dog. When he was young he had once had to kill twin fawns he hit with the mowing machine. He had been heartsick about it.

But, as we’ve aged, both of us have moved away from being the cause of death. I am left with only flies and mosquitoes as my victims, and Peter has given away all but one of his guns.

I let the birds and woodchucks take their tithe and every night when I shut the door to the chicken house I see a stupendously furry and glossy skunk and her half-grown offspring trundling to their hole under the shed. I talk to her a little and she has never threatened me.

But now I have a very sick cat. He’s only 3 years old and is gray with tiger stripes. When I got him at 6 weeks old he slept on the pillow by my head all night, for weeks. I would half-wake and reach up to touch him and he would briefly purr. I named him Smokey.

His first two years were unremarkable and I loved him the best of any cat I’d ever had, just as I loved every other cat the best of every cat I’d ever had. (That’s not quite true. I had a cat named Maple who has no peer, but that’s another story.) But, in his third year, he began to get thin, and his coat was dull. I waited to take him to the veterinarian, hoping it would pass, but finally knew I had to do it.

The veterinarian discovered he was anemic, and offered to do a dozen tests which, she said, could cost thousands. I declined and asked her to just treat, with antibiotics first. The antibiotics seemed to help a little, but soon it was clear he was still sick. We tried prednisone next, and voila! He got better. His anemia cleared and he got fat and playful.

After a time I reduced his prednisone, but he lost weight, and when I increased his dose he stayed sick. The veterinarian suspected cancer. We tried antibiotics again and he bounced back. For a month, he seemed like a kitten once more and would leap high in the air chasing Peter’s fly fishing line, sans hooks of course. Then he got sick again.

I decided I would let him die. I’d spent over $500 and he hadn’t been cured. I do not believe in extreme measures for animals, especially when so many humans don’t have health care.

As the weeks went by, and he got thinner and thinner, I began to feel more and more guilty. He could barely leap up to the sink to drink the drips of water from the faucet. (He refuses to drink from a bowl of water.)

I decided to try another veterinarian, hoping she might have a different take on his disease. The new vet thought it might be something called immune mediated anemia, but when she did the complete blood count she came back grim. His red blood cells were so low she said he needed a transfusion and his white blood cells were sky high. It was clearly some kind of cancer and was almost certainly fatal. She offered to put him down right then, in the office.

I looked at Smokey, sitting on the exam table and furiously licking the spot on his leg where they’d drawn blood. I told the veterinarian that since he was still eating and walking around, napping in the sun, and sharpening his claws on our poor couch, I would wait.

So here we are. Smokey ate a lot this morning, and took the goody-wrapped prednisone I’m giving him for comfort. He went outside and drank from the plastic tray I keep filled with water from the hose, and then lay under the hydrangea looking out at his domain. Sometimes I get a lump in my throat when I look at him, and stroke his back, and feel his spine jutting through the fur.

I hope he will find a space, under the chicken house or some bushes, that’s quiet and warm, and curl up and wait till his kitty essence departs, his lungs stop and his heart goes still. That is better than one more trip to the vet’s office, where his heart races and he hears big dogs barking, and the air is full of the sharp scent of strange humans. The last gift I can give him is a natural death, and all I have to do is wait, and witness.

Sybil Smith lives in Norwich.