Female cat, lumps in breast

[sum12luv]

I am taking my cat to the vets early next week. However, I am a little fearful of the outcome. My cat is 11 years old and, although spayed at seven months old, she had a malformed ovary and has endometriosis. Lately, she has been a little more lethargic and seems to have lost weight. I just put this down to her getting older, and possibly the heat.

Last week, I noticed hard lumps along her breast line on one side. They do not seem to hurt her, she lets me feel them, however, they seems to be inside the breasts themselves. I have an appointment at the vet, but I am aware of the possibility and what seems to be the poor prognosis for cats with breast cancer.

My other question is to do with cost. I will be able to afford surgery etc, but from what I have read, if she has breast cancer, even with treatment, she may not last much more than a year. Would euthanasia be a better option, if the diagnosis is BC?

Obviously, no-one can diagnose over the internet, but has anyone had a similar experience with a cat, and if so, what was the outcome?

Thanks

In general, the prognosis for cats with cancer is pretty dire. If it was just the one nipple affected it would be better, but from the sound of it the entirety of one side is affected. You only noticing it when it has progressed that far suggests it's quite aggressive, so may have spread.

My personal view with cats is they live for the day, quality of life is everything. Life saving surgery is one thing, life extending surgery IMO isn't fair on the cat - they don't know or understand why they are being taken away and tortured (in their mind), and won't understand the concept of a few more months. I am very much of the view that putting animals through procedures that distress them to extend life for a bit more is entirely selfishness on the part of the owner.

Having made it clear where I stand on such things, I still think it's worth going through the diagnosis and the assessment of progression to date. The vet may find out that it's less aggressive than most and/or is well contained, in which case surgery is worth considering. Another thing to consider is how well your cat may react to any various treatments mentally as well as physically - when Boycat was ill I could have extended his life a bit by taking him to the vet every week for hydration injections under the skin, but he would have been so miserable his remaining quality of life wouldn't really be there.

Make it absolutely clear to the vet how you are thinking. Vets tend to be cautious how they talk to owners in these situations as they rarely know whether the owner wants everything possible done or is pragmatic about this kind of thing. My vet gave a great sigh of relief when I made it clear to her how my views are, as she knew then she could tell me like it was rather than talking round subjects & sugar coating.

Someone else may come along with the opposite view to mine & say you should do everything possible to get that bit more time, or throw the dice in the hope she is one of the 1% or so who recover fully. And that's fine, you need to see all sides of the argument.

But in the end it's your decision, based on you and your cat. Just remember better a week too soon than a day too late.

I’m so sorry to read about your cat.
We had an unneutered female cat with breast cancer. She had an operation to remove the lumps. We also went to a specialist vet hospital.
She made a super fast recovery and I was hopeful
New lumps quickly came back after the operation and grew very, very quickly.
She could have had chemotherapy but we didn’t want to put her through this
I think the first operation bought her an extra couple of months.

I’m so sorry 😢

If she were my cat, I would keep her comfortable with pain relief if needed with the view to have her put to sleep once it became too much.

Thank you so much for this heartfelt, yet realistic support. At the moment Dotty is enjoying life, even if she sleeps a lot more than she did. She likes to go out in the garden, she loves being groomed (and this gives me the chance to check for any changes such as ulceration and so on) and she loves her extra Dreamies.

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I very much agree with @Allergictoironing on this. When our lovely girl was diagnosed (totally unexpectedly) at ten with a different flavour of awful, we were offered chemo to extend her life for a short time. She would have found being humphed back and forth to the hated vet incredibly distressing - and it would have been rearranging furniture in a burning house anyway. We possibly went in too soon, I know some people think we did, but I couldn’t bear the thought of her getting sad and skinny and suffering for even one minute. We broke our own hearts so she didn’t have to have to suffer - and tried to think about what an amazing life she had with us, full of love, and snacks, and her big garden she ruled with a barbed wire paw to keep intruders at bay.

If sounds like you don’t have a diagnosis quite yet? I am glad we pursued every possible test (all done in a single day at a specialist referral place after our own vet’s testing) and were able to make a fully informed choice. We had good insurance which meant we didn’t have to think about it. I had several long telephone calls with both our vet and the specialist vet after that too, and while at the time I felt embarrassed for being a bit of a pita, I am again glad I did.