I’ve a 14 year old British Shorthair, Fennel, 15 next month. She’s had arthritis for about five years and is on Solensia to keep her relatively stable, though by now she’s got quite a lot of muscle wastage so she isn’t a cat in good condition for her age.
She wasn’t herself last week, a bout of diarrhoea, drinking a lot and a little bit quiet in herself. She seemed to perk up after a couple of days, but Saturday she refused to eat. Yesterday she still wasn’t eating and had started to look actually poorly/depressed. We took her to the emergency vet who examined her and could feel a mass in her abdomen, on weighing her she’d lost 0.5kg in the three weeks since she was last weighed for her Solensia, now weighing 3.5kg. The vet suspected renal lymphoma, but booked her in to the hospital and for an ultrasound today. Her bloods were all enormously raised and added pancreatitis and kidney failure to the possibilities of what’s going on for her.
Shes been on a drip for 24 hours now with meds and there’s no improvement in her general condition. The scan was inconclusive and the vet says they’ll need to get a specialist to scan her, but the specialist isn’t in work until Friday. if it’s lymphoma, she’ll be put to sleep immediately as there’s no prospect of recovery. Meanwhile she’s still in hospital and they’re going to need to fit a feeding tube.
I am really concerned that she’s an elderly, already quite doddery cat who finds the vet incredibly stressful and there doesn’t seem to be much of a plan for her other than to medicate her and wait until Friday at which point if cancer is confirmed she will be put to sleep. On the other hand if it’s not cancer, we should be giving her a chance to recover.
I honestly don’t know what to do, I feel that it’s too long to wait until Friday not knowing what we’re dealing with but I feel like we are out of options…
What would you do?
photo for cat tax