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The vets put that scarf on him. I didn’t do that!
It’s the best possible news on every level. He’s got the low-grade lymphoma and according to the vet, cats can live a good quality of life for many years with this. She said I should think of it as a chronic, but manageable disease.
She put him on the chlorambucil (aka leukeran) which is, as Melissa said, a very mild chemotherapy drug, AND it’s not expensive, AND I only need to bring him next month, then for another ultrasound in 2-3 months, so I won’t be going completely broke in order to pay for visits and medicine.
Aside from “this has all been a big mistake, he’s fine” this is the best news she could have given me. I am SO happy. I am just so freaking happy.
Woohoo! Great news!
Oh joy! GREAT news, so happy for you & Buddy. And Finney looks like he made out like a fat rat during this whole thing!
AWESOME! WONDERFUL! FABULOUS!
So happy for you both (& Finney too)!
(I love that he’s eating in your photo – not traumatized by all this nonsense at all!)
Yay Buddy! Yay Stacy! Yay Finney, too!
What fantastic news! I’m just so relieved and thrilled for you all!
Excellent news! And I think Buddy is stylin’ in his scarf.
Great news!!!
YAYYYYYY!!!!! I’ve been so hoping that this would be the case.
I sure hope that none of my own get sick anytime soon. Between Buddy and Li’lbit (a canine child of one of the mother’s friends) I think I’ve used up all my St. Francis of Assisi trump cards! 🙂
Big hugs to you as I know all too well what that fear and trepidation is like.
This made my day.. no, my week… nae, I believe it has made my MONTH!! Sooo very happy for you! Makes me hug and love my furboys all the more! Break out the chocolate… 🙂
Hurray! Was almost scared to check your website but am now relieved to read the good news. Best to Buddy!
AWRIGHT! Believe it or not, we have been looking forward to Buddy updates – no, you don’t blog about him too much – and have been very worried about him. What wonderful news. I hope he tolerates the medicine okay, what with his digestive problems, and he gets fat and sassy like Finney!
Very happy for you.
He’s not eating tonight, but he got his first chlorambucil, which I will forevermore call the chemo pill so I don’t have to think about how to spell chlorambucil. So maybe he’s going to need to get used to that pill? I’ll try baby food later.
Thank you so much everyone for letting me rant and worry and for responding. It really helps. I was going out of my mind.
Hi Stacy, although I haven’t posted, I’ve been following your posts about Buddy.
I’ve had something to say about this, but I was saving it in case of the worst. However, as Buddy is out of the woods, I think I’ll touch on what happened to us.
We had a very special cat. I won’t try to go through huge paragraphs explaining why I say that.
I’ll simply say that he was braver than I am, more loving than I am, more of a gentleman than I am. More adjusted than I am, more long-suffering than I am, and if you look at it from the point of view of the relative proportion of intelligence between humans and cats, he was more intelligent than I am if he had been a human.
Feline AIDS finally forced us to put him to sleep. We chose not to be there at the final moment, because I had misgivings about the implication of the people who loved him somehow being involved in putting him to sleep. I was afraid he would see it as a betrayal.
He was brave, braver than I would have been as he went to his final reward. I should say that prior to this he had communicated with my wife that he wanted to be put to sleep, because he recognized that his condition was too miserable to live with.
OK. What I’m about to say to you, I’m just going to spill it and let you believe whatever you wish.
After he had been put to sleep, he hung around our place for 2 or 3 months. When my wife asked him about his new condition, he did not know what she was talking about. He did not realize that any change had occurred.
I have been meditating regularly for over 35 years. In one meditation, he clung to my left shoulder has he had in life, and we had a tremendous love experience between the 2 of us that sent us out into the cosmos together.
I’m not even going to try to explain how we knew these things or what proof we might be able to offer, except to say that we both very much have our feet firmly on the ground. I tell people that if you are genuinely going to deal with things that go bump in the night, you must have your feet on the ground more than most people.
So I suppose the moral of this story is that our experience suggests that the animals live on after their own fashion and can still even interrelate with the living.
Incidentally, even though he’s gone now (it has been 3 or 4 years), we still put his plate in a prominent place anywhere we live, and we try to keep up with his old collar. He’s always welcome…
What a happy day! I hope you danced merrily through the streets of your neighborhood. Just knowing exactly what Buddy has, and that it can be controlled with meds. is such a relief! Did the vet say anything about Chemo-related nausea (maybe why he didn’t eat earlier)? I remember, from your ‘Waiting for my cats…” book, what a great cat-nurse you are, and of course a fabulous cat mother.
I give him Pepcid AC 10 minutes before each meal, and I think this is supposed to help with nausea or upset stomach.
Greg, that was a beautiful post, just beautiful. When my cat Beamers died I hoped he would come back and haunt me. I had a special connection with him. And if there’s life after death I hope to be able to apologize to a cat I had growing up and how I left with my father when my parents divorced. I basically abandoned him and have never forgiven myself. So it’s comforting to me that there’s the possibility that I can make amends.