When to let go
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Despite the discovery of two new tumours, Phantom still looks forward to his favourite food
A READER complains (very politely and gently) that I’ve been writing too much about Phantom, my elderly American shorthair cat.
“Besides,” she writes, “you keep on saying the same thing again and again. Your readers already know that the tumour in Phantom’s gum cannot be removed.”
My apologies to readers. Of course, I’ve been writing a lot about Phantom’s tumour. It’s been very much on my mind. An Eosinophilic granuloma, it’s actually a skin tumour and nothing to worry about if it were on his shoulder, say, or his leg. Steroids would shrink it, and in many cases, it wouldn’t cause the animal any discomfort.
The tumour is in his gum, though, and in this location, it’s been causing the big boy a whole lot of pain, not to mention difficulties in eating.
The vet strongly recommended not to remove it. When cut out, this kind of granuloma usually grows back quickly. Besides, Phantom is too old to handle an operation.
Phantom is now 18 years old, certainly elderly, but I’ve begun to wonder how old is too old?
When he was 16, the cat’s previous owner wanted my vet to put him down because he was “too old”. At that time, the boy was very healthy, perhaps the healthiest animal in my household.
His organs are still working very well. Even the problems with his pancreas have cleared up. He would be very strong and active if it weren’t for that thing in his mouth.
Yet, for the first time since I’ve known her, my vet has begun talking about “letting Phantom go”. She has put animals down who were suffering from incurable cancer or injuries so severe that they could not be treated. She has never considered euthanising a healthy animal.
I have known other people who have euthanised dogs or cats, young, healthy ones. Some owners felt that their pet’s behaviour was uncontrollable. Others felt that they needed to make room for a different, more popular, breed of animal. Death was the easiest way to solve the problem.
Now my vet is preparing me for an
outcome that neither of us wants but that she expects. I look at Phantom. I don’t think he wants to die either, at least not right now.
His appetite is still healthy. He does have trouble eating dry food, which he loves, but he continues to eat most kinds of soft food I give him.
There’s so much he enjoys and so much he’s curious about. I begin seeing paw prints where he’s been climbing up to places in his room that he never visited before.
Okay, so his left eye is inflamed, as are his sinuses, but the vet thinks these problems have been caused by that thing in his gum.
When Phantom goes to the clinic for an examination after a month, I’m feeling optimistic. We’ll just have to figure out how to reduce his discomfort with those inflammations in his eye and sinus, I think.
And then, the vet finds two more tumors, one under Phantom’s eyelid, and the other in his nostril. She doesn’t send tissue samples to the lab, but she’s almost sure they are the same kind of tumour that’s in his gum.
The steroids haven’t stopped these new horrors, and we don’t know how large they’ll grow. We do have one more hope, a medication exported from Japan. It’s in a gel form, to be administered twice a day.
It will take at least a month before we (and Phantom) see results – if any.
The thought of what may happen in four weeks frightens me, but not Phantom. I just found a new catfood that he really likes. He recognises the packet it comes in, and when he sees it, he meows happily.
A cat anticipating the pleasure of eating his favourite food – he’s not ready to go yet, I think.
