Please don't take my sunshine away

This story started two years ago.  

I came home from work and prepared the cat food for my kitties.  My oldest cat, the little kitty love of my life, refused to eat and went and hid under a bed.  He was a fat and happy 10 year old kitty and turning down dinner wasn't in his nature.  I tried to get him to eat to no avail, so I took him to see the vet.  They ran lots of tests that were inconclusive and did an x-ray, they thought it was a urinary tract infection and treated him as such.  His health was deteriorating and I brought him back and they figured out that his BUN/creatinine ratio was very high and diagnosed him in the beginning stages of Feline Kidney Disease (renal failure), we were told he had about 6 months to live.  At this point we switched his food to the prescription kidney disease kitty-food and bought him a waterfall water dish so he would drink more water.  Also, the vet gave us medication to give him but it didn't work as he wouldn't take the pills.  I tried everything to make him take them; I wrapped him like a burrito but he was too squirmy, I held him down and shoved it down his throat and he would spit them out, so finally pill pockets were our answer.  He ate the medication for a few weeks in pill pocket form, until he figured out how to eat the pocket and spit out the pill.  I was at my wits end, I went to the vet and told them my dilemma and they gave me chewy pills, that worked for a few weeks and then he caught on to what they really were.   At this point, I thought for sure he would just die and it was because I couldn't force him to take the pill.  His kidney levels were still high and the vet suggested Subcutaneous (Sub-Q) fluids.  This is where you inject your cat with 100-300 ml of fluids in the scruff of his neck, this is a 5-7 minute process.  We started this and it worked like a charm, I would hold him down and my husband would start the line and squeeze the bag so it would enter him faster and cut down the time it took.  We did this process every few days and this gave him extra fluids in the body and kept him able to go to the bathroom and from being dehydrated.  His BUN/Creatinine levels soon dropped into the high end of normal.  The vet told us everything we were doing was amazing and really helping prolong his life.  We were estactic and other than the at-home treatments and bringing him into the vet for blood test we got our happy/healthy kitty back.  

This changed in early August of this year.  We went on vacation and had to board our kitty, we were hesitant to do this but we were told it was the only thing to keep him on the right track.  When we brought him home from his time at the boarding facility he couldn't walk straight, he walked in circles.  We soon found out he had suffered a stroke.  He has been rapidly deteriorating ever since.  He no longer can jump up on the bed or anything high and he has a hard time using the litter box and usually just goes on the bathroom floor  (Thank God for potty pads!!), but he still has life left in him.  The past few months have been so hard, I always knew that he wouldn't live as long as us but I never understood how it would end.  He is just bones and fur, he sometimes falls over, and he doesn't bathe himself anymore; however he still has spirit.  He lights up when we walk into a room, he lives for meal time and takes his fluids like a champ.  It isn't the end for him but it is definitely close and I simply cannot imagine life without him.  My husband and I got him when I first moved out west and he made us a little family, every decision we have ever made he has been a big part of and I can't imagine my life without him.  Even with all that I know we will lose him soon and I am very grateful that he was ours and we were his.