This debate always brings in mind the dignity with which our cats have ended their lives. They have all succumbed to something terminal and unpleasant, and there comes a time when we’ve had to make the decision that we can’t let them go on any more (a subjective decision based on observation and gut feeling, and usually the vet’s assessment), and we have to say goodbye. To me, that’s a hell of a lot better than hooking the animal to a life support machine to eek out a few more days/weeks/months of life.

However, when it comes to people, we keep them going for as long as they can, and longer beyond any natural process would allow, possibly in pain, certainly in the case of Alzheimer sufferers in a state of continued bewilderment, confusion and panic, and possibly pain. A crumbling mind in a crumbling body, and somehow our humanity requires us to hold on to this person’s life.

I feel, on the basis of observations that a cat with cancer who gets put to sleep when you can see that they have had enough is a hell of a lot more humane than keeping a human being who is in a terminal decline, pumped full of meds to control pain and or psychosis alive for as long as possible.

This is, as some may gather from other posts, something at the front of my kind at the moment. Last year, my grandfather’s mistress died. She had MS, and due to her immobility she had got a lot of bedsores, one of which was gangrenous. She refused treatment, and eventually died from septicaemia. Her choice, but not a good way to go. In my mind, she chose to die rather to continue in her immobile and difficult existence. A low, and no doubt painful death, but she clearly did not want to continue.

My grandmother is in hospital following what I can only assume is a psychotic incident last week. Her mind is going, quite rapidly, and while drugs seem to be helping, there will be a time when they do little. They certainly can’t reverse the memory losses. She’s got a living will, something I know about as does my mother (I don’t know the specifics of what it says). She’s made her choice a while back, and now as she starts to decline and medical attention becomes more and more necessary, we will have to ensure that her wishes are honoured. I expect it’s a “do not resuscitate” type thing. It may even be a “if I start to go ga-ga, smother me” type message.

What we can’t do is help her - like everyone else, we have to wait for the biology to fail.

My cats got better ends than either of the two people I mentioned here.