Where to begin

This is my first blog, so please forgive any issues.  My name is Dave and I am married to Patti and we have a cat named Miss Kitty.  She is a fantastic older cat with her own style.  As you can see she is an action star, but she also loves to cuddle.  She will sit on anyone's lap and not feel the least bit guilty about it.

Unfortunately this blog isn't all fun and games.  On 2/13/2013 we took Miss Kitty to have her teeth cleaned and to remove a bad tooth.  It looked like it was broken off.  That is really weird because Miss Kitty eats soft pate exclusively.  When the vet pulled the tooth, some extra "stuff" came out too.  He took a sample from the material and the bone.  These samples were shipped off to a local lab.  We waited for news.

We took her back for the follow up visit earlier then normal and the vet gave us the bad news.  Miss Kitty has SCC in her lower jaw.  He recommended that we see a local Oncology specialist and gave us two names.  I called the first one but they didn't have an appointment for almost 3 weeks.  This is a fast moving cancer so we couldn't wait that long.  Luckily Southwest Veterinary Oncology could get her in on 2/11/2013.

I called my Mother, because we share the same outlook on pets.  We really love them with all our hearts and that is what makes the end so painful.  It was a nice talk and it made me feel much better.  Then I went out for a bike ride.  My step dad Don gave me a call and he shared a few stories about his lost pets.  It was nice to talk about it some more.

Now I have talked to our friend Koren, who went through a similar issue with her cat.  Oscar was 8 years old when diagnosed with SCC but in the upper jaw.  That one is very hard to do anything about.  He died on her lap in her home.

I also reached out to a vet friend.  He was very nice and told me to listen to all the information but not to feel pressured to "do something" about the cancer.  A mandibulectomy is very intense and it can lower the quality of the cats life.  Right now Miss Kitty doesn't know that anything is wrong with her, she is acting completely normal.  I really don't want to cut her jaw off and fill her full of painful drugs if we can't have a great outcome.  She doesn't deserve the torture.  That being said, if the Oncologist says that this is a small tumor and we have pretty good chances I think we might go for it.

It won't be an easy decision.