A few people have asked for an update regarding Bosco, the senior cat I adopted after Feliks’ untimely demise.
I’m not quite sure what to say, but Bosco is doing well. When I got him, as I think I said, he was shy, and only just feeling comfortable enough to do things. Now he is enjoying the entire house, though still a bit shy. He is getting more comfortable but it has only been about a month.
Firstly, he was taken for a blood check, everything came back normal. He also had an allergy to a mat we gave him to lay on, but we were able to treat that quickly.
Since then, he has been more active, walking around and exploring, and really breaking out of his shell.
He’s quiet happy, social, and an insane cuddle bug. He likes to sleep with me, and he is a hugger.
I have another cat, called Tiger, who is about 14. She is learning to deal with him but she’s never been the nicest.
I really haven’t moved on from Feliks but I am happy to see this old guy grow out of his shell.
I took Feliks’ cat kicker toy and took out the motor. I put a sock filled with rice that I can microwave to make a heat pack.
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I wanna say that there is something fulfilling about adopting senior cats. They’re mature and many know the rules of life. People don’t adopt them, they’re not young, they’ll die soon, but death happens. Life is about making every day matter. These old animals, dogs or cats, do need lives and homes too.
After the sad situation on Monday, I came home completely a wreck. Feliks was my boy, my son. This blog is such a sad one, since the first posts were just the excitement of watching a little kitten grow to become a big cat but the young age Lymphoma took him too soon. We’re almost certain Feliks suffered from Regressive Feline Leukemia (which doesn’t appear in standard tests) that made his cancer too aggressive. We believe that when he had been mauled, he was infected.
Tuesday I was a wreck, my heart was so empty, I could not function. This was a nightmare. That’s when I got an idea. I was reluctant, I don’t want to move on, I don’t want to forget Feliks and I wont, but I have space. Why not give someone new a forever home with the love and attention I’d given Feliks.
Wednesday I went to a shelter, but not with the intent of adopting a kitten. No, why not adopt a big old cat. That’s what I did.
The shelter was not the best, the cat I adopted seemed malnourished, sickly, something. Does it matter? It’s Christmas. His charts say he is around 10 years old. He was surrendered after his owner passed away. He looks much older, so he very well may be in his teens. The big guy got to come home and now he’ll get to spend whatever days, months, or years he has left living in luxury.
We (my mom and I) brushed him and cleaned him up, he was filthy. The shelter was giving him Meow Mix. He’s old. His joints click, he might have heart disease. We will take him to get looked at, but anything beats the disgusting shelter we got him from.
His coat is already softer, he seems so happy. I started him on kitten food. As big as he is, he was brought in at nearly 16 pounds and seems to weight 13.5 now. He’d been there for a month. His hips and legs are weak and atrophied, either from a mix of heart disease or simply lack of moving. The shelter seemed stressful and the staff said he lived mostly in a small hole, hiding and watching others.
I should mention, he is a Maine Coon mix, and given his size he should probably weight 16-18 pounds. So I hope we can get him there. I started him on Omega 3-6-9, CoQ10, L-Lysine, and CBD. (Not to mention I am switching him off of Meow Mix and onto Blue Buffalo Kitten until he gains back strength) He’s a huge, soft guy. He needed a home and now he has one. It was the least I could do as a gift for someone or something else. As soon as holidays are over he will get a proper exam. I’ve been reading about how to help him gain strength in his back end (which I hope we can do. If he has heart disease though, that may prove difficult)
We’re calling him Bosco, after the chocolate sauce. Also, he looks like he could be Feliks’ grandpa.
He does not fit on Feliks’ tree, but he tries. Feliks’ had a bird window that Bosco will get to enjoy now. He gets to watch the cat TV, and although he has little interest in playing, he loves catnip.
Senior Cats need homes too and often they are simply not adopted. So here we are, with this big loaf of cat. I wont blog about him, I just wanted to share this Christmas story. While I got no gifts this year, he most CERTAINLY did.
Unfortunately we took him to be put down this morning. As much as the CCNU helped him for the last 2 weeks, he had a heavy decline this weekend. It was an easy choice when we saw the ultrasound.
He was an amazing and good boy. That is all I can say. He was taken too soon.
Please always vaccinate your cats and have them tested properly for things like FeLV and FIV before adopting them. Basic tests will not do. In his case, he had it where it remained a negative test but the virus was in his bone marrow. The severity caused the Lymphoma and made it resistant to almost all treatment.
That being said he had an amazing extra six weeks and I will gladly say we put him down at the right time. Any longer and he would have suffered too much, but in his present state today, it was just ‘another vet visit’.
Thank you for following this blog. You will be greatly missed, Feliks.
10/10/20 - 12/20/21.
((Dec 9th, 2021 - Picture Taken Today!!)) I want to share his experiences because I think, when I was researching this topic for myself, there was not very many people out there who had posted much experience and understood what was going on. I myself am new to understanding cancer, let alone knowing things about medication, the way things work, protocols, times, prognosis. So I want to make this as a bit of a way to continue to share his journey but also help other people who may have just discovered that their cat has Lymphoma.
So the first thing I want to say is that I still do not know Feliks’ FLeV status. This highly contagious and terrible virus is easily vaccinated against and if you have a cat, and that cat lives with other cats, see other cats, goes outside, if your friends have cats... get this vaccine. For cats, AIDS and Leukemia are viral diseases that they can get by licking something they shouldn’t have licked. It can last on surfaces for a long time, too.
Feline Leukemia can cause Lymphoma. This is a cancer of the Lymphatic system and in humans it’s highly treatable, in animals, less so, due to needing to dial back the strength of the medicine since animals will ‘give up hope’ if they are too sick for too many days. Humans, they do give up hope, but you can talk to a human and they will logically understand they have to keep going.
Feliks, as I said, was diagnosed with Mediastinal Lymphoma. This means the Lymph in his chest has developed tumors. Mediastinal area is what keeps your lungs, heart, trachea, etc all nice and secure. If it swells up, it will begin to cause Lymph fluid to drain into the crevices around the heart and lungs (not inside the lungs). This lead to his difficulty breathing.
His first protocol, unfortunately only worked partially. This was a standard CHOP protocol. It looked like the Vincristine had given some relief but the pill he received to take a week later did nothing (Cyclophosphamide). This meant that the tumor improved slightly but seeing as the Cyclophosphamide did not do anything, it meant this protocol would most likely need to be changed. (He did not experience side effects with the Cyclophosphamide but did experience mild stomach upset at Vincristine and lethargy for 2-3 days 5 days after it was administered)
I was really scared, because I love him and he doesn’t want to give up. The vet decided that she was going to do Elspar, this is an enzyme that essentially combats the enzymes that these kind of tumors love to eat. This offered minimal to no relief. We were, on the 6th, supposed to give him a new drug, called CCNU. This is part of a rescue protocol when COP/Chop fails. By the 6th, his breathing was bad, but he was not suffering from low Oxygen and the vet explained that for now, it seems he’s fine, but feels like he has a baby in his chest. She said that he did not have fluid in the lungs, and that it had to be the mass making his breathing so rough. I worried, and said that maybe it is time to put him down. She said, ‘you already paid for the CCNU, he’s fine right now, give it to him, see how he does, and he’ll let you know when it’s time.’
That Monday night and Tuesday he seemed to develop anemia with Pica, common with cancer treatment (low blood cells, lack of iron). Vet said we cannot give him an iron supplement, but by Tuesday night we noticed that his breathing seemed less laboured. It had gone from about 60 BPM at resting into the high-low 50s. By Wednesday it went into the low 50s-high 40s. It’s safe to say that today I have been checking his BPM and it’s finally in the Normal Range (His is 30, normal is 15-30 per minute while RESTING). His breathing movements seem to have improved dramatically. I’m not sure how long this will last but I’m very happy for him. In fact today he had so much energy he had several instances of short-lived zoomies and engaged in his toys, playing a lot.
We started him on CBD oil a few weeks ago and have been using the Pet Wellbeing Life Gold. I do not know how much they are helping or not but it seems at least the CBD is helping him with nausea and appetite and inflamation. He’s also on Prednisolone 5mg Daily.
I just wanted to share this update to help anyone else who’s cat has been diagnosed with this terrible cancer. This is not a surgically removable one and can only be handled with Chemotherapy. Radiation can damage the heart and lungs too easily so it’s not done with the cancer being cased in the chest.
I did not mean to make this a blog like this. As I wanted to just show him growing up and travelling with me. Now we have a change of plans in our lives and we are living with it.
If you have questions or stories you can send me messages or asks, I want to help people not feel as lost as I was when I had taken him for some swollen lymph nodes and gotten told he had very bad cancer. It’s really scary but it becomes easier when you know what to expect and look for.
I should say that I do not know how long he will live for, but every good day is a day I didn’t think I’d have with him. He’s so strong, too, to keep going despite having such difficulties. He’s inspirational in a way to me...
Hello, I was hesitant to post this on here but I decided that maybe the experience we are going through can help others who are having the same situation.
About a 2 months, I took Feliks in for an abscess on his back, which I figured he got when he snuck out and got a nice slapping from out other cat. He had a pretty swollen lymph node and so he got an antibiotic injection. The sore healed but the lymph node didn’t go down.
A week later I took him in because his breathing was quick and shallow. After looking at him and taking an x-ray, the vet told me that he needed to be put down. Just from the x-ray alone it turned out he had Mediastinal Lymphoma.
I took him home that night and we spent the next day together, he got to do what he wanted and all that stuff. Two days later we took him in and we saw a different vet. We were planning to have him euthanized. It was sudden, and remember, he is young.
This vet told me she was going to try to drain fluid out of his chest, if it’d work we could try to send it to oncology (if we got him breathing properly again). She was able to remove 1/4 cup of fluid from his chest. It got sent to an oncologist, and she also gave him a steroid shot. By the next day he was running around like you’d never know he was sick.
The oncology report came back and he does have cancer. So we decided it’d be in his best interest to try Chemotherapy. So far so good and he is doing almost (too well) at least in present. His second Oncology visit is this coming Monday. He only has to go once every three weeks. We’ll find out how his first batch is handling in him.
This form of Lymphoma, in 80% of cases, is caused by exposure to Feline Leukemia. This is a viral disease that there are vaccines against. Feliks was vaccinated when I took him for his first vet visit. He’d had a negative test too. The vet is unsure about why he has this form of Lymphoma but suggested he may have had Leukemia as a baby, then ‘healed’ it out of his system to test negative. It has a very poor prognosis but life can be (with good quality) extended with treatment.
So I want to explain why we opted to go through with Chemotherapy. I’m not really one for putting my animals through unneeded stress.
- Feliks loves to sit in his crate and go on car rides. This was the biggest decider in if we were going to go through with this, as the oncologist is about 45 minutes away one direction. Most cats will not handle being in a crate. Fortunately, he loves it. If he hated it, sadly he would not be with us anymore. He actually doesn’t mind the vet, either. I assume this has to do with having been there when he had his mauling before I got him.
- Cat Chemo is not like people Chemo. Cat Chemo is far less than what they will give to a human (in ratio). Humans can understand why they are getting so sick but a cat cannot. The goal with animal chemo is to slow down or even stop the symptoms from getting worse. Most cats will go into remission but most cats will relapse over 6-24 months.
- He is one years old. So far during his treatment he has gotten to kill something, play, and live life. I’m trying to get him to experience so many new things before his time runs out.
- I can afford it. No, I am not asking for money or aide. So please don’t think that from this post. This is fairly expensive. It’s about 250-300 USD per oncologist visit. It can go up and down depending on other tests.
- He’s handling it well. Actually the steroid has given him unbelievable strength and he is too difficult to hold down to give his pill. But he is acting like a normal one year old cat with too much energy now.
- On top of Chemo we’re giving him herbal supplements (Life Gold). This does not work alone. Most of the 1* reviews assume that it’s a cure. It’s not. It’s like a super dose of vitamins and other things to help with antioxidants, free radicals, and offers things like Ginger for stomach aches. We might start CBD too.
So I wanted to give an update. This is not happy news but it is... in a sense. Considering a few weeks ago I was under the idea I’d have to put him down right then and there. I’m thankful for everyday with him. He’s been through so much but he’s so happy and silly. I took this picture above, yesterday. If you have any questions and gone through something similar you can send me a message.
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