Update on Basmati with skin cancer

[AnnieBrooke]

Hi, since I like updates I thought I'd post one.  Basmati, my white cat, had to have squamous cell carcinomas removed (from his face, nose and ear) in late May.  There were many difficulties to this, partly that we didn't have a good setup for keeping him in the house after the surgery (my son has allergies to cats that cause allergy-induced asthma), and most difficult, the placement of the tumor on his face meant his eyelid could not be saved, so they had to remove his (healthy) eye.  When he came out of surgery, it became apparent that his optic nerve had been damaged by removing the eye, and his other eye was widely dilated and would not constrict, and the doctor thought perhaps he was blind.  That was a very sad time.  But once he came home, I put on a birds video from YouTube (the kind made for cats to watch), and turned off the sound so he would not have any cues, and he leapt forward to bat the screen.  He could see!  

Several weeks have gone by, now.  Bas has healed from his surgery (though he will need another one ... he has a recurring sore on his other ear that I'm almost sure is also a scc, and they didn't get a clean margin on the cancer removed from his nose.  But the doctor says those can wait a while.)  His winter coat has been evenly distributed all over the house (we have gone through many lint rollers) and it -- tentative assessment -- appears that he is not growing back the lush, massive layer that seems to coat us all with white hair all the time.  Maybe.  

My son's asthma is not worse than it was, meaning, Basmati can live in the house with us, a big relief.  

One unforeseen glitch that was not on the horizon but became clear when Bas became an indoor cat, is that our youngest and most engaging cat, Dark (he is sleeping upside down on the couch in my pictures if you want to click it) used to be the only cat allowed indoors.  He, the nicest little boy in the world, is being a total butt to Basmati whenever they chance to meet in the house.  Basmati will be rubbing my ankles and purring while Dark is above him on the counter hissing and crabbing and muttering.  We're figuring out, from the general cheerful calm prevailing outside among the farm cats, that Basmati must have acted as an alpha's alpha to them, he was strong, male, and mighty, and they are all clearly glad he's gone.  I guess Dark is feeling the pain of the fact that where Bas went, was the one place he called totally his.  We didn't know this dynamic because Bas is the sweetest of the sweet, to people.  Purr, drape, snog, talk.  Everything you could want in a cat.  But the outdoor cats all now hiss at him when they see him, and I don't just think it's the fact that he has a stitched-shut eye.  (On that side, he looks like Voldemort now.)

We did all of this with no idea how we were going to be able to manage the situation, I'm glad we've found our way so far.  We'll still be stuck in the fall, when we move to a little house to be near my son's school instead of the spacious family farm.  Dark has been the only cat there, and he has an in-and-out cat flap, because he drives me nuts wanting in and out about ten times a night otherwise.  We can't have Bas there if he is still shedding like he invented fur, the large farmhouse can handle it but the small suburb house can't, and we can't have him there with an in-and-out flap or he'll be back out in the sun, and we can't have Dark there unless there is an in-and-out flap (despite Dark's love of bringing in live mice) because I will not lose all my sleep.  And let's not forget, Dark is copping major attitude about Basmati's presence in his world.  (If they begin spraying in the house, that is IT.)  We can't leave Basmati all day alone at the farm, I don't think, and while we could leave Dark at the farm, I think that's not what we want, since he is a great house cat at the small house.  But this has been a real lesson in taking things one step at a time even if the future is totally unknown, so I'm (cautiously) optimistic that we will find an answer.  So far, not bad.

[AnnieBrooke]

I'm sending the same wishes to you, Pip.  :)

[Piparskeggr]

Here's hoping for a good outcome for Basmati.

[AnnieBrooke]

... Incidentally, Basmati's good eye is still not constricting all the way.  It moves a tiny bit, but he is walking around with a permanently wide-open pupil.  I don't hold out a lot of hope that after this amount of time it will heal, but at *least* he can see (probably not well but it beats being blind).  It probably has the advantage of making him less likely to want to run outside, as the sun would probably hurt his wide-open eye.