Two weeks ago I received a huge blow. My cat Mindu, who I adopted when I was just 19, was diagnosed with large cell lymphoma. There is currently no cure.
She had been fine in herself, and I’d just noticed in the last couple of weeks before I took her to the vet that she had been losing some weight. We have another cat with hyperthyroidism, so I thought it might be this. “I think that I can feel a tumour,” the vet said after palpating her gut. Several tests, a scan and an x-ray later and his diagnosis was confirmed. Within a week she was looking gaunt and poorly.
I didn’t stop crying for a week and a half. I have always felt so protective over Mindu especially, the most timid and sweet of all my beloved cats. She lives in my bedroom, sleeps on my bed, comes to me for cuddles and comfort. And there was nothing I could do to take this horrible disease away from her, and stop her being taken away from me. I was bereft.
Our only shot at elongating her life is chemotherapy. It sounds awful and people not in the know immediately think of human chemotherapy, with its awful side effects and suffering. Feline chemotherapy is vastly different, since it would be unethical to put a cat, who doesn’t understand, through that much suffering. Human chemo is often done at pretty much toxic levels in the search for a cure. Feline chemo is designed to elongate life but also give back quality of life.
Mindu had her first chemo on Friday. Beforehand we were lucky if she ate a bit of boiled fish or stayed in my arms for a 10 second cuddle. We expected her to be a little under the weather perhaps, but the day she got home she started eating normal cat food again and purring. Proper happy purrs and kneading. And she seems almost back to herself again. She’s back to sleeping on my bed, coming to me for cuddles and headbutting me. She’s relaxed. It’s so strange, so unexpected after these last two weeks of bad news, worse news, and awful news. I’m tentative and aware that it could all change in the blink of an eye, so I’m having to take the good days as they come, and be thankful for them.
We have no idea how long the chemo will give her. The aim is to shrink the tumours and get her into remission, but they will eventually come back, sometimes resistant to the chemo. For some cats it works, for others it doesn’t. We just don’t know what the future holds for her. We may have extra weeks, we may have months. We may have a year. In 10% of cases, some cats have a couple of years. She turned 13 this month. I just want her happy and in my life for as long as possible. I love her so much.
