Leaning Cat

You know how most cats are graceful and elegant? I don't think mine ever learned how to sit up straight.

Anatomy of a cat's tumor

I'm visual, so here's a diagram to explain what's happening...

PURPLE = the area of the tumor. Most of it is in the cheek and is gradually spreading towards the right side of this diagram, where the jaw and eye are.
PURPLE X's = teeth that have been extracted or loosened on their own. She may have lost some more upper teeth that we don't know about because when the vet looked in her mouth today, she didn't see any teeth that would create any sort of grinding with the bottom teeth.
ORANGE = the jawbone that the tumor is rubbing against. You'll notice from the arrows that the wider her mouth is open, the greater these two areas come into contact.

Oncologist Visit

Cutie cat's tumor has been growing and causing complications in her mouth. She's completely on canned catfood now and recently has been making a crunching noise when she opens her mouth wide. Crunching noises with soft food doesn't jive, so this morning we took her back to the oncologist for a checkup. My guess was that her teeth were grinding together from having their position shifted, but it turned out to be her jawbone. As she opens her mouth, the enlarged portion of her tumor rubs against part of her jaw. Believe it or not, this was actually good news because it mean that my cat 1) didn't need to be sedated for an x-ray, 2) did not have to have any teeth extracted, and 3) did not have to risk infection or weight loss from having teeth extracted.

All things considered, the vet was very impressed with how well kitty's been doing. (Remember that back in December, the prognosis was 1-2 months and it's now 7 months later.) Despite some gradual weight loss, cutie cat still has her appetite, grooms herself regularly, and is very content and interactive.

Current weight: 5.96 lbs
Current favorite food: Trader Joe's Turkey & Giblets

Struggling with the in's and out's.

Penny is still struggling with getting enough to eat. I've been trying to feed her 4x per day because she doesn't eat very much in any one sitting, and doesn't seem to like eating the dry food that's left out for her. She's also had some difficulty with constipation these past few days. The poor cat went and sat in her litterbox 3 times that I noticed on Sunday, before she was finally successful and got to bury something.

Current weight: 6.4 lbs.

What if...

I haven't posted in a long time, because everything has been holding steady. Aside from coughing up some yellow liquid this morning, Penny seems to still be happy and actually has been quite energetic since I started feeding her kitten food.

I do wonder whether I'm feeding her or her tumor though. Kitten food is higher in calories and I hoped that would help her gain weight back, but nope...she's still skinny. I hope that the extra calcium in the food is not fueling the tumor growth.

Here's a little photo experiment I tried to see how the tumor has affected her face:

Current weight fluctuates between 6.6 to 7.0 lbs.

Poop mystery solved.

Penny has always been a good communicator. "Pet me," "feed me," "let me in the closet." Whatever she wants, she finds a way to stubbornly let us know.

Awhile back, I discovered a piece of her poop in the middle of the kitchen floor and was convinced that my husband had somehow carelessly gotten it on his shoe and tracked it over there. When I accused him, he denied it and then accused me of doing it. Well, after some close scrutiny of his shoe and my sock, we determined that Penny did it all by herself. She never was very good at "making it" into her litter box, but it was highly uncharacteristic that something would end up so far away from the box. Turned out that she was trying to tell us to clean her litter box - very effective considering that the little present she left was in a location that could not have been missed.

There was a bit of mystery as to how she did it though. I mean, did she actually "go" in the middle of the floor, or move something over from her box? This week, the mystery was solved when David caught her in the act. She went to the bathroom as usual back at her box, and then dragged herself with her front paws, while in sitting position with her rear legs up! And what was left behind was, well, left behind. Mystery solved.

Current weight: 7.0 lbs.

Farewell, Tiny.

This past week I've been really thankful that Penny has been so stable. She's still a skinny little cat, but has been happy, energetic, and even seems to be better on the sneezes, lesions, and bothersome mouth pain from the tumor. No news is definitely good news for her.

On the other spectrum, the picture above is actually of cancer cousin Tiny, back when he was healthy. This is how I remember him. Tiny's intestinal lymphoma had made him very sick and weak in the 2 weeks since the family found out. He was in obvious pain and barely hanging on, so last Saturday, he was put to rest. Bye-bye, big guy. We'll miss you.