Navaho Gunleg

OK, so we have two cats, a male and a female. The male has been neutered for quite some time. The female wasn’t spayed because me and the girlfriend thought we’d like to have kittens at some certain point in life.

The female of our two cats, Mimi.

The Cat Pill
So we did give her the ‘cat-pill’, i.e. a contraceptive for cats. Thing is — long term usage of this ‘medicine’ can at some point, cause cancer in the milk-glands.

That is why, when we found a conspicuous lump in her chest back in January, we immediately went to the vet.

Spaying
The vet diagnosed a beginning, possibly cancerous, tumour and, considering she has been on ‘the pill’ suggested that it would be better for the cat anyways if she was to be spayed. That way — the hormones will stop producing, and the milk-glands’ tumours won’t grow anymore — or something like that.

So of course, we want the best for our little kitty (she’s about 8,5 years old, but still rather small for her size), so we made an appointment to get her sterilised.

That day, when we got her back, the vet did note, however, that she saw the lump and it did look like a cyst, so she cut that away. Coming home, our cat was all sleepy and could barely walk. This is normal after have anaesthetics and the next day she was feeling all better.

In the passing days, we kept an eye on the stitching to see if it didn’t bleed et cetera…

More Lumps
After 3 weeks however, we started feeling lumps again. Bigger than the one before and, importantly, more than before.

So we quickly made another appointment to check up on her — and this is, roughly, what we heard:

The milk-gland tissue is highly likely infected with some tumour. The vet explained that she could do a biopsy, but that could be totally meaningless because if the tumour was too small, she wouldn’t be able to get the tissue and the result would say nothing, because the tumour could still be there.

Also, waiting a couple of weeks to see how it develops seems out of the question as well, because if a tumour is a few millimetres small, it could’ve spread cancer through the rest of our beloved little cats’ body.

So, we could do a biopsy, hear she may be OK, but could still cancer be diagnosed at a later time.

What to do… what to do… Sit this thing out, with the risk of her getting seriously ill, or act now and try to do something about it?

“Doing something about it”, would entail removing all her milk-glands and surrounding tissue…

Scary, huh?

Large Operation
Although scary — it wasn’t really something to think about for very long.

Tomorrow she will have the first in a series of two major operations. This can’t be done in one session because they won’t be able to close the kitty up if they start doing the procedure on two sides at once.

What’s most bothering me?
The fact that she would’ve been OK if we spayed her years ago. She would’ve never have had a contraceptive then to begin with.

Another fine example of how short-sighted selfishness will slap you into reality in the long run: our selfish motives shouldn’t have gotten in the way of our cats’ health.

I hope she’ll be OK though…

Keep you posted as we’re riding this thing out.

Humans, Animals, Pets, Cats, Cancer