Is it time to put my cat down?

He’s 16. We adopted him and his sister from the SPCA(animal rescue basically) when they were kittens. His sister is ok, although arthritic. The boy, on the other hand, started having infrequent seizures last year. Then a few months ago he went deaf. He’s EXTREMELY clingy. My wife has health issues so she is home pretty well all the time. Our cat (his name is Stitch) is on her all the time. Literally about 60-70% of the day he is having physical contact with her or me. He yowls loudly (I assume that came from being deaf) quite often, and wants attention all the time. But that’s not the real reason we’ve thought about this. His limbs are fairly weak, and when he has a seizure he has slipped and fell a few times. The seizures are every 2-3 months (but maybe more, we just write down when he has them). Right as he’s about to have one, he meows as loud as he can to get our attention and we just hold him. He searches for comfort. This fall my parents want to take us in a cruise (we’ve been on an actual (non visiting-the-parents/in-laws)vacation once since we’ve got married, so it’s kind of a big deal to us). In the past we’ve just gotten friends to check in on them. We may be able to get someone to stay here while we go, but he doesn’t like strangers. And being deaf, he gets startled/upset much easier. He’s been our baby, but just looking at him, he’s not able to get around very well. If he’s not ON one of us, he’s not happy. We have stools everywhere so he can jump up on the couch, bed, etc. While I certainly don’t want to put an animal down because it’s convenient for us, I also don’t want to prolong his suffering or risk a seizure when we’re not around. He is a part of the family, but I don’t want to go away on vacation to come back and find him dead or suffering. I just don’t know what to do, and I’m looking for advice. Please don’t just say ‘take him to the vet’. I just can’t afford it....and I mean that literally. We wouldn’t be able to buy food for 2 weeks if we took him in for a full checkup. So unless it’s an emergency, we just can’t do it. TIA for all you answers

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