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Email Gemma about Gi
Gi's SCC
in the tongue
Gi and SSC April 20, 2004 This is my experience of Feline oral cancer and how it affected my beautiful Himalayan cat Gi who had once been a champion show-cat before he had adopted him, age 4 when he was no longer a champion and no longer wanted! He had been under the weather since October 2003 but only when hearing the diagnosis did his behavior make sense- particularly when I read other stories about feline cancer of the mouth. He had spent more time sleeping and his once beautiful coat had gone thin and matted. He himself had lost a lot of weight and at an initial vet consultation we had been told, "well he is getting old." Saturday 20th March 2004: Well Gi's biopsy results came back and we have been told that it is a tumour and they cannot operate on it because it is in his tongue and they cannot remove the tongue and throat and jaw. They have said that they don't know how long he has got left to live. As it is he cannot eat anymore and Richard, my partner and I have to feed him a special meal (CD for anorexic and convalescing cats) in syringes- which he has 3-4 times a day. He has been having those for just over a week now. At first we had thought that he had a blocked saliva gland as he was having trouble eating and he was drooling quite a lot, which kind of made sense when the vet suggested it and I cannot tell you how shocked I was when I heard the results yesterday. Sunday 21st march 2004 Mother's day Richard and I have spent the whole weekend crying and making a fuss of him. My Mum is going to speak to the vet, who had originally seen him, tomorrow to try and get some more information. Over the last week and a half he has definitely improved now that he is actually getting goodness and nourishment through his food, but I have to say that I haven't felt so low in my life. I know that people will think he is only a cat, but he is my baby. Richard and I adopted him after we had been together for less than a year and the whole of our relationship has been based around our lives together with the two babies- Gi and his younger sister Bonni, also a seal tabby Himalayan Persian. I know that as he was Richard's first ever pet that he is taking it particularly hard- Gi is such a baby and it is so hard to look at him, when he looks relatively well, and know that we may not have him at Christmas. We are trying to make everything seem normal for him, so as not to upset him, but Bonni is a little bit upset because of us being sad and crying. I have cried so much my head and eyes have been hurting all weekend and I have tried to sleep as much as I can to try and block it out. It doesn't work though because when I wake up again I know the awful truth. He is only 11 years old, which seems relatively young for a cat and I know that I am stupid to think of them as my children, but I love them as if they were. In the meantime Gi is still on his course on antibiotics and he has to have steroid tablets everyday. We have accepted that we will have to feed him with his little syringes for the rest of his days. We have got a system going with lots of pre-filled syringes being prepared in the evening so we can feed him 3-4 times a day and my Mum comes round during the day when I am at work. The good thing is that at the moment he does seem perky in himself, so I am hoping it is in a preliminary stage and that he has many months, even a year or so left- I really don't know but can only hope for the best. He comes into the kitchen and cries when he is hungry and he bites the syringes enthusiastically. Yesterday I poached him some white fish and pureed with full milk and cream just so he has something else to taste and he always did love fish. Monday 22nd March 2004: Not a good day today. Managed to get 4 syringes down him at breakfast and Mum said he had cried for food at lunchtime. However when I got home in the evening he was quiet and listless on the sofa and attempts at feeding were difficult. He struggles violently in his towel that we wrap him in and he was really flapping his tongue around-, which only makes it bleed. Managed to get 2-3 syringes down him but this isn't enough and both Richard and I got a bit upset, as this is the first time that he has resisted feeding. Having read through some of the other stories on this site I am scared that this means that we won't be able to maintain his feeding and weight and I am scared that we are putting him through a painful experience for our own selfish reasons. Having read other accounts of feline cancer I am starting to wonder if his is quite advanced as he cannot eat at all unaided and his mouth does bleed a lot and he has constant drool which although clear at the moment, has been darker colored and does have an odor. Tuesday 23rd March 2004 Mum has spoken to the vet in depth about Gi and it really doesn't look good, as he has said that he is in the advanced stages of the cancer. The vet on Friday had been right when she said he would be lucky to have 1 month left. I feel like crumpling and yet I am at work when I hear this news so have to stay resolute and dry eyed and just get on with my work. Richard finishes work at 3pm so has the benefit of an early afternoon rest with both Bonni and Gi so he can lavish some extra attention on our little prince. I can hear the wavering in Richard's voice when we speak and we try not to say too much knowing that our hearts will break if we accept what we know to be inevitable. Tonight we may have to discuss the unthinkable- whether we are to make a cut off point after which we do the right thing and have Gi put to sleep to end his suffering. Mum said he ate a little better earlier today and jumped on the window sill so there is still life left in him but it breaks my heart to see him a shadow of his former glory- what a proud magnificent cat he was with his long silky coat and large blue eyes. Eyes that penetrated my soul and will forever be in my heart. Thursday 25th March 2004 Well yesterday Gi had a really good day- certainly a lot better than he has been and both Richard and I have tried to stop crying as much and be more positive around both cats. Gi spent the afternoon curled up with Richard and Bonni on the sofa and he has been howling and chatting to us, jumping on the windowsill and crying for his dinner in the kitchen. Yesterday he has over 20 syringes full of food throughout the day and actually had seconds after dinner at around 8pm. He has been having at least 2 brushes a day- his favorite and Richard spent over 45 minutes combing him- with Gi lifting his little arms so we could comb underneath. Both Richard and I feel much more positive and feel that perhaps he has longer to live than we had anticipated when the vet had said we are simply postponing the inevitable. As long as he is well and happy as he seems to be now, we don't see why he couldn't live for another 2-3 months, provided he keeps taking his steroids twice a day and we feed him as we have been doing. I made hotdogs for dinner last night and he insisted on biting off a soft piece of roll even though he couldn't eat it. It is sad for him as he is obviously intrigued by the smell of food even if he can't eat it. Please God let him be Ok for a while yet so we can enjoy him and spoil him. Thursday April 08, 2004 Well I haven't written in over 2 weeks and the last 2 weeks have been better than I could have imagined. Gi had an infection in his mouth and this has been treated with more antibiotics. The vet explained that as the cancer grows the blood supply is cut off to other parts of the tumours and they then break away which explains the bleeding and the infection- his mouth smelled so bad that when he went to the vet I was convinced that the vet would say eh should be put to sleep. Anyway, the antibiotics worked and the smell has now gone and we have got into a routine of feeding him in the afternoon and crushing his pills up into the food. He gets through pretty much a whole tin of the ACD dinner a day and is lively and chatty and although I know it is wrong, I can convince myself that he is fine and that we now just have to feed him by syringe. Bonni has been a bit put out by the lack of attention to her but last night she snuggled up on the bed with Gi and we all lay together watching Television- it was bliss! I know how cats are sensitive to smell and I think that Gi's infection and the stinky mouth and drool had put her off and she was very distant for him. From having been a wreck unable to cope, I feel more confidence and both Richard and I are insistent that we stay strong and positive for Gi's sake. He certainly seems to do better when we are positive and normal rather than weeping and being sad. Perhaps there is a lot to be said for positive mental attitudes when faced with cancer. I am hopeful that we will him for perhaps a few more months? We really hope so. Thursday April 15, 2004 Well everything seems to be ticking along. Gi seems to be doing OK- he is having about 20-230 5ml syringes of food a day and has been laying on the bed etc. Mum said today that she thought that perhaps his tongue was being pushed over even further by the tumor so we are going to have that checked out by the vet on Monday. We had a lovely Easter weekend together and Gi laid out on the new sun lounger we bought for him and the sunlight shone through his fur and he seemed to enjoy himself. Richard and I are going away on may 1st on a holiday we booked about 10 months ago. We are both so worried about leaving him. Although Mum will be at the house for several hours a day he is a creature of habit and such a daddy's boy that I am worried. I just hope that he keeps going on a strongly as he has been. It has certainly taken us all a while to get used to the syringe feeding and we even bought him a set of baby bibs as he does get dinner down him and on the fur around his mouth. We used extra soft balsam tissues to wipe anything off of him and yet his mouth where he dribbles a lot seems to be a little raw at the moment. Friday April 16, 2004 Well it seems that I may have spoken too soon. Gi is going to the vet today as his tongue really has been pushed further over. Mum had a further look in his mouth and she is concerned that it is so pushed over that she can't see the back of his throat and he really didn't want to eat hardly anything yesterday. His mouth bled and he growled which he has only ever done a few times before. Richard and I cried last night. The last thing we want is for him to be in pain and we may be facing the inevitable at last. We have had him for the 4 weeks that the vet had predicted and I want him to go with dignity and I said to Richard that for him it will just be like having a lovely long snuggy sleep while he waits to see us again one day. I can't type anymore at the moment. Have spoken to my Mum. The vet said that he has ulcerations in his mouth and this may be why he doesn't want to eat and it is forcing the tongue right across the mouth. He said that he has done well over the last 4 weeks but that we should accept that it is nearing the end. He said he would expect to have to put him to sleep within the next 2 weeks. I do not want Gi to suffer. At the same time it is very hard when he does respond to our calls etc. to have him put to sleep. It is our selfishness at wanting him with us forever that makes it so hard. I have been reading other diaries on the web about people's experiences with cancer and they are so hard to read as they are so familiar and the sentiments expressed the same as those I am experiencing. We have made an appointment for tomorrow- Saturday to take him to the vet. Richard is working in the morning although how he will concentrate I don't know. I just spoke to him on the phone and he has got the sun lounger out for Gi. It is the first sun of the year and I had so wanted to have Gi over the summer so he could lie under his little conker tree in the garden. He used to lie under the tree all curled up and snug and I cannot bear to think of him not being with us anymore. I shall close here and perhaps I will make one final entry on Monday after the weekend? Tuesday April 20, 2004 Well Gi has gone. We had him put to sleep on Saturday at 12 noon. It was the right time for him to go but it didn't make it any easier. I cannot go into the details of what happened at the vets without getting too sad to write but we buried him in our garden under our large ash tree and a little ornamental blossom tree. We wrapped him in his favorite soft blanket and I put in photographs of me and Richard and Bonni and I wrote him a letter and poem that I tucked in with him, along with fresh forget-me-nots and a small posy of spring flowers. Richard bought a small lantern and each night we have lit a candle and we can see it from our bedroom window- it is very reassuring that we know that he is nearby and that we can go and speak to him whenever we want. I miss him more than words can express and we cannot believe that we will never see him again. I am looking forward to the day that we are together again. We told Gi to wait for us and that Mum, Dad and his little sister will come for him when it is time.
