My Furbaby is in the winter of her life

Well everyone, this is extremely depressing to type.  My precious Mazda, beloved companion of 15 years, is reaching the end of her life.

I got Mazda as a birthday present for myself.  I love animals, and I was having a terrible mouse problem in my home at the time.  I was also lonely, so I went to the shelter and saw little Mazda, crashed out in a cage.  She was born in January of 1994.  I instantly fell in love with her and took her home.

Mazda popped out of her carrier and saw everything was decent and decided to run the place and allow me to be part of her staff.  She made quick work of the mice.  After a week I was mouse-free with an extremely happy cat, filled with delicious cat treats she got every time she brought me a dead mouse.  While she was devouring her tasty treat, I was flushing the prize.  The first day or two, she was bringing me mice every couple of hours.  After 2 or 3 days, she had figured out the mice were burrowing in where the waste water pipe left the house in the basement, and would go down there and catch the mice as soon as they got into my home.  She'd run upstairs with a petrified mouse in her mouth and play with the poor mouse for hours until she got bored and put the poor rodent out of its misery.

We've been through so much together.  About 4 months after I got Mazda, I left my husband.  She and I went through a divorce together.  She greeted me every single day when I came home from work and would leap up onto my shoulders right from the floor and start massaging my shoulders and purr in my ear.  We went through dating together.  We moved two times together.  We even got remarried.  We went through 2 pregnancies together, and even a birth at home together.

But now, she's not eating.  Her weight is down to 6.4 pounds, from her usual 13 pounds.  I've bought every different kind of food, trying to see what she'll eat and what the problem is.  She seems to have multiple problems - she refuses all dry cat food, so I bought the very expensive moist cat food.  She only nibbles on it and then refuses.  I've been encouraging her to eat every hour, but she only takes the smallest bites.  She's lost 4 teeth over the years, so this wasn't too much of a surprise.  But her eating only very small amounts worries me.  With my hourly feeding vigil, she's perked up a bit and has tipped the bathroom scale at 6.6 pounds, but with the amount of work I've put in to get those 4 ounces on her, I just have to admit I'm fighting a losing battle.  The good news is she isn't exhibiting any signs of pain, so as long as she isn't in any visible pain, she'll stay with me and I'll simply continue feeding her hourly and hope to get a little more weight on her.

We have an appointment with the vet, but I need to do what the doctors always tell families of cancer patients:  hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.