another opportunity

Just a year ago, I received the news about my beloved Zen's thyroid condition, which led to the heart condition that killed him about 100 days later. I wrote this essay, called "Love, Loss and Tolerance" about how I felt about my black Siamese kitty.
Last Thursday, for no real reason, I skipped the ASC meeting. I was up there, one exit away, having dinner, and I decided I was going home.
When I got home, I went through my routine of calling Nutter. It looks like this: I yell "Where's my kitty?" and he comes downstairs and meows at me, gets on me, purrs, the whole thing. When Zen died last year I made a vow to Nutter that every day for the rest of his life I would spend time playing with him and petting him and make sure he purred.
He didn't purr on Thursday, although he did come down the stairs. He looked...wrong...I guess. I asked my husband if he thought Nutter looked sick. Will thought he looked tired. I did some things and eventually went upstairs to bed. By then Nutter was clearly sick. His third eyelids were showing, he was completely lethargic, uninterested in anything including his comb. He wasn't meowing at all (usually he "talks" constantly to us). He was shaking too. He left the bed and went downstairs into his basket. Will, who is usually indifferent to the cat, took the basket and put it on his desk so he could pay attention to Nutter. When he came upstairs to bed, he brought the cat (in the basket) with him. I slept upside down in the bed all night, one hand on Nutter, giving him Reiki and Shamballa & whatever other energies came through, basically waiting for him to die. He looked that bad.
In the morning, his eyelids had retracted and he begged for food. I called the vet anyway, because he was still sick, but not as bad as the night before.
The bottom line is this: Nutter's got a mass in his chest. It's probably cancer although we're obviously hoping it's not. I will know in a couple of weeks for sure. I've got a Shamballa Basic Healer class this weekend that will feature Nutter healing, and of course I've been working on him constantly.
My first instinct, of course, is to do everything for my cat, regardless of the cost. But he's almost 14 and I'm not sure he'd BENEFIT from being cut up and radiated and all that. He's near the end of his natural life. I hate to let my kitty go, though. It's a selfish thing, I know. Keep him here with me, unhappy and in pain, or let him go and find Zen on the other side, his friend he STILL searches for 9 months later?
I'm keeping to my vow of playing and petting and combing and purring, pouring antibiotics into him twice a day and hoping I won't have to decide, that it will be just a bad infection and we'll clear it up just fine.
cross-posted to my Pets blog