Stumpy Update

Stumpadilla (see below) seemed to have discomfort when picked up starting around the end of February. I took him to the vet and constipation was diagnosed. He got a mild laxative. About a week later, he came through the living room dragging one of his back legs. Back to the vet. Something more serious was wrong but they didn't know what. Ran lots of tests. By the next afternoon, he had trouble with both legs and sort of half-dragged half-wobbled. He was unable to get into the cat box but clearly had to go very badly. I put him in a diaper, which he, let's say, disliked. My vet referred him to the veterinary teaching hospital here at the university. Between Fri and Mon he had lost all response in his back side. More tests revealed that he had cancer, lymphoma. Within a couple of days, he couldn't walk at all but could still pull himself around. He got a round of chemotherapy but it, unfortunately, didn't kill the cancer cells; instead, they increased. By March 5, something, perhaps a tumor (I didn't pay the $1500 for the MRI to find out since surgery wasn't an option at this point since the cancer cells did not decrease) was pressing on the vertebrae that controlled muscles for the bladder, rendering him unable to pee. The urine had to be expressed, it couldn't stay in his bladder or it could become toxic. Middle of February, Stumpy weighed 19 pounds. By mid-March, he was 14 pounds, but that's still a big cat. I had to learn to express his bladder, which wasn't a bit of a problem.....once I FOUND it. It feels like a little water balloon in all that fat. It took several trips to the hospital to learn to express the bladder. In fact, I went to the hospital every day for two weeks, for between one and three hours.
Last week, I had three options: another chemotherapy treatment (but one that had more side effects and that might kill him); keeping him comfortable for as long as he had left; euthanasia. He was clearly never going to walk again. He didn't appear at all to be in pain. The doctor said the chemo might extend his life by a few weeks as the cancer cells were proliferating extremely aggressively. I decided on option 2. This conversation was Wed, Mar 25. I was unable to go to the vet hosp on Thur or Fri, but I expressed his bladder twice a day, and gave his antiobiotic, his prednisone, his med to make bladder expression easier, and his appetite stimulant. He really ate very well for a sick cat (though nothing like the gorging he did when well). On Sunday, the 30th, he was clearly dying. He was probably comatose by early evening as he wasn't responsive to voices or petting, but that was only in the final hours. Sunday night I checked on the rise and fall of his breathing as I wrote and watched a movie, sang him his little song, rubbed his head, told him goodbye, and, in the morning, he was gone.

A truly great cat. I didn't have him long, but he got in my heart, hard and fast.