This year, we’ve noticed one of our cats, Nematode, losing weight. We took her to the vet in August when we thought she was below 8 pounds (normal weight for her is 10 or more), and found that she was actually 8.4.
We just checked her again and found she was 7 pounds, and took her to the vet again where that weight was confirmed. She has seemed to have a healthy appetite, so we wanted to try and figure out what was going on. In examining her, the vet felt what he had previously thought was an enlarged kidney being even larger (we discovered 2 years ago that she had kidney problems and have been treating them). The more he palpated it, though, the more he realized it didn’t seem to be the kidney, but was some kind of growth.

And it has doubled in size in the last 3 months.

The expectation is that it is a tumor, and that it will probably double in size again in another 2 to 3 months. And that will be it for her. If we wanted to be more sure about the problem, some surgery would probably be required, and there is a good chance that surgery would do her more harm than good at this point.

The goal now is to make her comfortable – continuing her kidney treatments with slightly higher frequency, giving her iron for anemia – and enjoy the time we have.

She’s sitting on my lap purring right now, and probably thinking, “I’m not dead yet!” Certainly, even though I’m preparing myself emotionally, I don’t want to treat her as though she’s already gone. Her being the first to go is unexpected, though, in that she is the youngest of our three cats.

For anyone who doesn’t know her, there are some pictures here and here.