please help my cat enjoy his last year with me
this is cheeseburger, my best friend.
he's 11 years old and will (hopefully) be turning 12 in march. i've have him since he was a kitten, running around in a house owned by my parents who refused to spay and neuter their damn cats.
overrun with animals, the cats i bonded with in their home often got taken from me in the night, driven to shelters where my abusive step mom did not allow me to say goodbye to them. on one such night, as i laid in my bed sobbing into my boyfriend's arms, this little orange kitten jumped into my lap and never left. i did not choose burger. burger chose me.
by sheer luck entirely, burger survived in my parents house as an indoor/outdoor cat, and finally i had the chance to move out and take him with me. i was able to get him his shots and microchipping, get him fixed, train him to stay indoors, and ensure his health and safety. burger is the first cat i have ever had who i was able to take proper care of, free of my parents' lackadaisical attitude toward animal welfare. he has lived happily and comfortably with me for five years now, matching my schedule to the minute and purring beside my head every single night.
a few years back burger was diagnosed with feline lower urinary tract disease, a chronic condition that can be fatal in male cats if left untreated. it's very stressful and scary to manage, i have to watch this guy piss blood sometimes and just shoot liquid meds in his mouth like it's a regular tuesday evening. i wouldn't get pet insurance until a while later, and so this pre-existing condition means i spend a lot of money on his health and comfort that i cannot get reimbursed. his medicated diet costs me $120 a month. i buy glade plugins that waft kitty xanax through the whole house. he needs pain meds daily during flare ups, and is a pro at vet trips who charms the pants off all the techs. until very recently, i lived on my own, barely scraping by in a city where rent bleeds most of the population dry. working full time and paying all my own bills, i have skipped meals to make sure cheeseburger eats. he is my world. i have never loved an animal the way that i love him.
a little over a week ago, one of his flare-ups wasn't going away. the vet suspected a urinary blockage, which can kill a male cat pretty quickly if not dealt with. operating on him would have cost me & bailey $6-8k, and none of the credit companies plus our combined savings would have paid for it. upon a second examination at the emergency vet, the news we got was better for our wallets but far worse for our hearts--it was not a blockage. it was a tumor.
i had my head in my hands just laughing in the vet's office. burger has always taken feline mirroring to a new level. several months before he started having his piss issues (pissues), i was in the ER with kidney stones. burger famously climbed up on my stomach while i was in bed writhing in pain and pissed directly on me, as if to say "wow, sucks to suck. watch how good i can piss. you wish you could piss as good as me."
instant karma, you orange bastard. we're in it together now.
now and then. i had my kidney issues, he was there a few months later pissing crystals. in may of this year i got diagnosed with cancer, up rolls burger with cancer of his own. what else can you do but laugh. that's what i told the vet.
transitional cell carcinoma is incredibly rare in cats. it's difficult to diagnose, and we're still only 99% sure that's what's going on, but the ultrasounds don't look promising. the vets have advised me to treat it as if it has been diagnosed. because there is so little information on how the cancer behaves in cats, i don't even really have a lot of information on what the future looks like. one study of 20 cats, given all kinds of treatment or lack thereof, saw the median survival after diagnosis at 261 days. i'm choosing to believe that is a highball to avoid breaking my own heart.
TCC is aggressively malignant and almost always inoperable. if untreated, it often results in a quick and unpleasant death.
there are several options for treatment. sometimes, in miracle situations, the tumour can be operated on. there's the option to get his whole bladder taken out and i can stick him in kitty diapers until he's ready to go. we can stick a catheter or a stent in him so he can pee better, it won't do anything for the tumour though. all these procedures will make him prone to infection and constant care / re-testing, most of them are invasive and uncomfortable.
right now he's on NSAIDs which have been known to have anti-tumor properties. his bloodwork is good and he is incredibly healthy in every other way. radiation therapy might be an option, but it would likely require travel and i'm not even sure they do it for cats. most of these methods have little cases to study and have only been performed or studied in detail on dogs.
the tl;dr is this: my best friend is in pain and dying slowly. i don't know how much longer i have with him. i don't have a lot to cling to as a solution here. and i really, really do not have the money for a lot of it. i don't even know what those numbers look like, and as is the case with veterinary medicine, you usually don't get a warning until they're staring you in the face. as i mentioned, i am also battling cancer right now, and while my cancer is far less aggressive, fatal, or scary, it is still expensive.
if putting him to sleep is the thing that will assuage that pain most effectively, then of course that is the choice that i will make for him. for now, though, i would like to call every oncologist i can get the number of and try to spend a little more time with cheeseburger.
below you will find our gofundme. the dollar amount contains everything that my pet insurance would not cover from burger's most recent emergency visit, complete with invoices and claim breakdowns. i will likely add to it / change it as we navigate his treatment. anything, ANYTHING helps, even if we do not reach the goal i set.
if you would like to see more pictures/videos of cheeseburger and the wonderful life i have lived with him, please check my tag. if you cannot donate to us, the most i can ask is that you help me celebrate his life, however much longer it lasts.
thank you.
gofundme
