Dang, Dang, Dang. And Some More Dang, Too

Very, very bad vet news about the Boe Kitty.
My beautiful tuxie child.

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You might remember the Defective Knee-Cap Saga from last year, in which the final official opinion was that The Boy just had weak bones, probably because of his feral childhood.
Fuzzy bits on xrays being healing of injuries.
Surgeon's first theory having been that he was being raised on tofu by crazed hippie owners – us – and had not enough calcium.
Not.
So over Christmas last year he had one knee problem, then in late spring another.
Well, if one was weak, so was the other, so that sort-of made sense.
So we were to let his little patellas heal by keeping him in to enforce rest and minimize jumps, and he would be pretty much okay.
And he's been going about his kitty business, being okay.

I was skritching him under the chin, and found a lump.
My immediate thought was, of course, abcess, or possibly dental problems.
Well, no.

The lump is misshapen bone on the side of his jaw, causing increasing difficulties in eating, grooming and the like.
He's marginally okay now, but if it keeps growing it will doom him.

Their current working theory on the cause is bone cancer.
HIM IS NOT QUITE TWO YEAR'S OLD.
The vet is saying that maybe he was born with it.
Which is more just badness in the universe than my brain can hold.
If is this, he can get steroids for a while to slow things down, but we're talking months.
It's his jaw, which is a very bad place indeed.

The only alternate theory is a possible systemic infection by one of a couple of fungal thingies.
One of which might make sense – an infection from pigeon or bat droppings – since we have no idea where his young feral mom had her nest.
My rapid reading through googled sources says it is known to go systemic in young cats.
The radiologist doesn't like this concept, and is thinking an early injury lead to a tumor which spread.

I do like the fungal theory, since anti-fungals would mean constant medication, but the possibility of a longer term survival with some reasonable quality of life.
And there is no history of an actual accute injury.
His feral family was observed and mom and litter trapped as soon as possible.
He was already about four months old when trapped because he was the smart boy who evaded the traps.
But no one ever said he was limping – only that he was too damned smart for his own good.

He goes in for a bone biopsy Tuesday morning to sort it out, since the treatments would be completely opposite.
So be thinking good thoughts about funguses for us.

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