What's Up with My Cat

Cancer is a learning experience, even in a cat. I heard the diagnosis a month ago, and thereby entered cancer college.

Squamous cell carcimoma is common in cats. In humans, it usually arises on the skin from overexposure to the sun, or in the lungs from smoking. In fact, my response to hearing that the lump on my cat's chin was probably cancer was to ask him if he'd been smoking on the sly. Turns out, cats probably get this cancer from carcinogens in cat food cans. Since I never gave him canned food, though, some other cause seems indicated.

I learned from the vets that this cancer was aggressive, and that cats didn't respond well to treatment with surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, or all three. Palliative care is the best option. After a few weeks to a few months, he would "decline," and it would be up to me to decide when to have him put out of his suffering.

I bought him luscious prescription canned food, food that would tempt any cat not actually within death's door. And he was prescribed pain-killing drops that I am supposed to wrestle into his mouth three times a day or "as needed for the pain." As if any cat is going to admit to being in pain. Au contraire. Cats are driven as a survival mechanism to hide any distress.

He has been drooling some, perhaps because he can't close his mouth all the way. But drooling may also be a sign of pain in a cat. Dogs drool as a matter or course. But cats usually drool only when they are in severe pain or are deathly ill.

I'm cheered whenever he finishes eating a can of food. And I applaud when he seems to enjoy lying in the sunny back yard, or sitting in my lap, on his recliner, or on the filing cabinet next to the window overlooking the backyard - which I call "kitty TV."

Short of interspecies telepathy, however, I can't know precisely when his life becomes more of a burden than a pleasure. But if he stops eating, that'll be a pretty big clue that the time has come to release him to the elements.

I worry a bit that he may go outside, tuck himself into a dark corner somewhere, and quietly pass on. But keeping him inside would remove a major source of his pleasure. If he becomes too feeble to navigate the two flights of stairs leading down to the backyard, that would be another clue that the time may have come.

It's a puzzlement to me. An ex of mine had a cancerous cat, and regrets that she let him live and suffer as long as she did. I don't want to act too soon or too late. But there's no way to be precise about this. I might as well admit that I won't be ale to make the perfect decision, ask the cat and myself to forgive me in advance, and do the best I can. As if there's any other choice.

I'm in cancer college now, and the final exam is a killer.