Peanut and his stitches and times of hard decisions

Peanut quickly got used to his cone and very soon figured out how to get through the window bars with the cone on so it didn't cramp his style much and the vet said: "well, ideally, stitches should be in 10-14 days so leave it on for longer or take it off when you are there". I took it off on Thursday morning while I was home and 2 hours later, Peanut had taken out the last remaining stitch..... Dude! I also saw that the wound had in fact closed completely so I was less worried about it and left the cone off. Once the stitch was out, he stopped bothering the area and he is fine and back to his usual mischievous self.

It's great when things end well but now I am faced with a new problem. Tom and Miss P are 2 cats that belonged to my elderly mother that I took in over six years ago when she moved in with my brother for health reasons.
Tom is now about 15 years old, Miss P is 13 and both have been eating less than usual. Tom seemed especially bad so I took him in to see the vet along with Peanut. She could find nothing overtly wrong so we ran blood tests which showed impaired kidney function. I have taken care of cats with chronic kidney disease before so I wasn't too stressed by the diagnosis - he is 15 and it is fairly common in old cats. Unfortunately, his eating then went from bad to worse and after two days of refusing food even though I gave him anti nausea treatments at home, he went back to the vet and got more antinausea injections and finally ate something the next day.

It seems that one of his kidneys feel lumpy on palpation and although his blood urea and creatinine levels are elevated, the numbers are not that high that he should be experiencing such extreme symptoms.
The vet and I discussed the possibility of cancer but diagnosis would require ultrasound and perhaps biopsies. The problem is that after subjecting the poor guy to invasive testing, treatment options will be very limited due to the fact that he has herpes and cancer treatments such as steroids will make his herpes flare up. When I first got him he had a flareup and was so ill I nearly lost him. I won't risk that again. Eventually he started eating again and after a few bouts of vomiting yesterday, is eating relatively well today

So poor Tom will have urinalysis to confirm that he does actually have kidney disease rather than a bladder infection and to check for protein loss but I think it's better not to put him through a barrage of testing, just the basics to keep him as comfortable as possible for as long as possible.

Miss P of course decided that she should add to the drama and refused food since Friday. I tried to take her to the vet on Saturday but of course she ran and hid and couldn't be found. I'll try again on Sunday but I will have to take her to a different vet because my own vet isn't open on Sundays. She is a feral-born kitten who was caught at 3 months old and is really very wild at heart. To give her any kind of treatment is stressful to her and difficult. I don't know if it is even worth trying to diagnose much in her case because many things will be untreatable. I'm speaking from experience, she runs away and hides outside if she feels bothered when she is sick.

This is the heartbreaking side of owning pets, it's also very hard on the pocket