Roller Coaster

Bullwinkle is in pretty bad shape this morning. He cried last night and today in a very plaintive way, a way I hadn't heard before. And when I was feeding him thru his feeding tube, on a blanket on the washer (the approved feeding place), he cried a bunch of times as if he was in pain and then peed all over the blanket. That's a big deal because he's always been a very meticulous cat and even last week, when I was feeding him and he had to pee, he just jumped down and went to the litterbox (with me crawling along on hands & knees behind him). He also has a swollen chin from the chemo yesterday -- it looks like a little white goatee. He seems quite miserable all around.

Bullwinkle when he was young.

He'd go out looking for trouble if none was handy.

To make matters worse, I saw Bullwinkle's diagnosing vet briefly yesterday. She asked how he was doing and I said I didn't think I'd gotten him to the cancer place in time for a remission to be a possibility. She bristled and said something along the lines of time not being the reason remission won't be a possibility. I really didn't have it in me to argue -- but I also didn't have it in me to lie -- so I just said, "I wish I'd gotten him there earlier." Her response: "I sense a subtext here." I decided to be a little clearer and said, "I wish you'd referred him." (I don't remember feeling angry at that point, just really sad.) She really bristled then and said now wasn't the time or place to talk about it, and she walked away.

This vet is the only person Bullwinkle has ever growled or hissed at. I wish I'd listened to him earlier -- I'm now thinking he was onto something. And in my small world, she's the vet who said nothing could be done, while two other vets (Drs. Blackshear and Kelly) are saying they've had cats go into remission from this kind of cancer -- sublingual squamous cell carcinoma. Part of the reason I decided to go ahead with the chemo was that I hoped that perhaps this would be an experience the diagnosing vet could learn from -- sadly, it was ultra-clear yesterday that that won't happen.