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Marinetti
Today was hard. Not as hard as some unspecified day in the future will be, or as hard as I thought it would be a few hours ago, but nevertheless, not one of my better ones.
I got home today to find Marinetti making a strange noise with his mouth, kind of a clicking, crunching noise. He occasionally is prone to making strange noises, being a strange cat, but there did seem to be something weird going on in his mouth, and then I noticed blood on his paws and freaked.
I called the vet, and the technician was awesome and said that the vet had an opening in half an hour, and since Marinetti was due for his annual anyway, I might as well bring him in and deal with the whole shebang. So I jumped in a cab and hightailed it to the vet, the whole way certain that this was capital-I It. He was a good boy the whole way in the cab, sitting in my lap and purring, but I was acutely aware of just how skinny he was.
When I got to the vet's office the light was much brighter than in my house, and I could see that he had a massive patch of hair missing on his chest that had not been missing, as far as I could tell, yesterday or this morning. It didn't look like he'd pulled or scratched it out, though. He'd also lost a ton of weight, which I knew, but the amount was still terrifying.
The vet was super-great. She couldn't find any sign of trauma, and he'd stopped making the noise and was back to acting normally. She could see some jaundice in his mouth and what looked like a healed cut, but nothing that scary. She had no idea what could have caused the fur loss or where the blood was from. (In hindsight, it occurs to me that it might not have been his blood, but Cocoa looks fine, so who knows.)
The main thing is obviously the weight loss and also that she can feel nodules on his liver, which are probably a tumor. He was showing some liver problems last year. Given his age, it's likely that there's something nasty there.
So. Yeah.
The good news is that he does not appear to be sick or showing any of the symptoms of about-to-be-fatal cancer. The vet did bloodwork to check his hyperthyroidism and see just how bad the liver levels are. She broached the possibility of an ultrasound, but agreed with me that it's probably pointless—if he does have cancer, there's really nothing that can or should be done about it, and he's clearly happy, active, and eating now, so unless that changes, the kindest thing is to not do anything invasive.
The sense I got from her is that it's probable that it's the beginning of the end, but it's not the end now. I'll know more when the blood tests come back tomorrow or Monday. It's possible, but not likely, that it's something like out-of-control hyperthyroidism that can be contained with increasing his medication.
I'm a lot less hysterical than I'd expected to be, or was when I saw the blood. I guess it's partially because I was expecting having to suddenly make a decision tonight, and it looks like I'll be spared that, and also that I almost lost him in the summer and any more time seems like a gift. But he's the best little guy, and I just want him to be around forever.
I got home today to find Marinetti making a strange noise with his mouth, kind of a clicking, crunching noise. He occasionally is prone to making strange noises, being a strange cat, but there did seem to be something weird going on in his mouth, and then I noticed blood on his paws and freaked.
I called the vet, and the technician was awesome and said that the vet had an opening in half an hour, and since Marinetti was due for his annual anyway, I might as well bring him in and deal with the whole shebang. So I jumped in a cab and hightailed it to the vet, the whole way certain that this was capital-I It. He was a good boy the whole way in the cab, sitting in my lap and purring, but I was acutely aware of just how skinny he was.
When I got to the vet's office the light was much brighter than in my house, and I could see that he had a massive patch of hair missing on his chest that had not been missing, as far as I could tell, yesterday or this morning. It didn't look like he'd pulled or scratched it out, though. He'd also lost a ton of weight, which I knew, but the amount was still terrifying.
The vet was super-great. She couldn't find any sign of trauma, and he'd stopped making the noise and was back to acting normally. She could see some jaundice in his mouth and what looked like a healed cut, but nothing that scary. She had no idea what could have caused the fur loss or where the blood was from. (In hindsight, it occurs to me that it might not have been his blood, but Cocoa looks fine, so who knows.)
The main thing is obviously the weight loss and also that she can feel nodules on his liver, which are probably a tumor. He was showing some liver problems last year. Given his age, it's likely that there's something nasty there.
So. Yeah.
The good news is that he does not appear to be sick or showing any of the symptoms of about-to-be-fatal cancer. The vet did bloodwork to check his hyperthyroidism and see just how bad the liver levels are. She broached the possibility of an ultrasound, but agreed with me that it's probably pointless—if he does have cancer, there's really nothing that can or should be done about it, and he's clearly happy, active, and eating now, so unless that changes, the kindest thing is to not do anything invasive.
The sense I got from her is that it's probable that it's the beginning of the end, but it's not the end now. I'll know more when the blood tests come back tomorrow or Monday. It's possible, but not likely, that it's something like out-of-control hyperthyroidism that can be contained with increasing his medication.
I'm a lot less hysterical than I'd expected to be, or was when I saw the blood. I guess it's partially because I was expecting having to suddenly make a decision tonight, and it looks like I'll be spared that, and also that I almost lost him in the summer and any more time seems like a gift. But he's the best little guy, and I just want him to be around forever.