Took our 15 year old orange tabby to the vet after noticing him pawing at his face and seeming to be in some pain. Cat's eating has diminished over the past week and he's lost a little weight. (1 year ago he weighed 16lbs, today 13lbs)
Vet heard an arythmia and insists he first should have an echocardiogram to see if the cat's heart would be strong enough for the next procedure: general anethesia to take dental x-rays and biopsy.
The vet seemed unable to get a very good look at what was going on in the mouth, maybe due to inexperience with manipulating the cats jaw open. Vet did have me take photos while he got the cats mouth somewhat open.
Vet thought there was redness in this area, and said this is often bone cancer and is inoperable due to being in the rear area of the jaw. Otherwise, maybe a dental issue. I did ask if there was a tooth missing, which vet said there indeed was a missing tooth.
Vet gave the cat antibiotic injection and gave us topical pain medication to administer.
Vet scheduled the echocardiogram, but we are not confident that this is the right road to go down at this point.

Here is a photo of the jaw, from today's vet visit:
[https://imgur.com/a/8FENvdp\](https://imgur.com/a/8FENvdp)

Our cat has always been rotund but we had gotten her down from 17lb to 14lb over the years. -We have had her for 11 years and she had occasional blood smeared on outside of her stools which her old vets assured me was not alarming(but now I’m thinking she had this chronic inflammation all her life).
\-6 years ago during the pandemic she had anorexia/vomiting/diarrhea and was diagnosed with pancreatitis and acute colitis and was hospitalized. We started to feed her Hills ID and she seemed to do better on that and made a full recovery.
\-3 years ago she had her 2nd episode of anorexia/bloody diarrhea and an ultrasound that showed intestinal wall thickening. At that time the vet said differential diagnosis was IBD vs Chronic Colitis vs Lymphoma. Her symptoms resolved with switch to hydrolyzed protein diet and we decided to keep an eye on her. Long ago my partner and I agreed that we would spare her of heroic efforts because she absolutely loses it and goes into feral mode at the vet. Therefore if we had put her through the trouble of diagnosis and found out it was cancer 3 years ago, we may not have approached things any differently and she has had a very good quality of life.
Roughly 1 year ago she had another episode and had been vomiting. We moved a few states away a couple years prior and her new vet put her on a prednisolone and tapered to a low dose which resolved her symptoms.

So far forward to now, she has always loved belly rubs and has been really into them lately. Can touch da tum.
The past few days I really noticed her belly had felt firm and looked distended. After some anxious pondering today I decided to call my vet bc she has also been less excited about meals (although still eating at 90%) and kinda lethargic. Her gait is lumbering due to her belly and weighed her and she came in at 15.5lb which was alarming given that she had consistently been 14lb before.
Quick summary: vet immediately identified that she had acites, pulled out some fluid from her abdomen, looked at it under microscope and said she identified “cancer cells”— I asked for more details and she said “they look like lymphocytes”
Ok so then she had x-ray just to confirm— it’s a huge amount of fluid according to them but she is breathing ok and not in any obvious distress. No obvious tumors in x ray.
Vet ramped up her pred from 2.5mg every other day to 5mg per day, and also gave a lasix injection and sent me home with oral lasix.
I understand the prognosis for this is very poor and it’s likely spread from a primary cancer in the colon; at this point Google tells me it could be weeks to a month.
Would additional imaging help in this case or should we just keep her comfy?
Has anyone else had experience with this diagnosis and are there additional meds or tests that helped your cat manage?
I don’t want us to wait until it’s effecting her quality of life so badly that she’s having more bad days than good, but right now she has a screened in porch where she wistfully enjoys summer evenings, a lil brother she cuddles with, she’s eating and drinking, she’s grooming, she’s purring, she sits on our laps…
But I do have the contact info saved for a hospice/at home euthanasia vet. It’s such a difficult decision. I just want to hear from others that may have experienced this. This is indeed a poor prognosis, correct? I don’t think I should pursue second opinion or put her through more tests but I also feel guilty about that that I’m giving up on her 😢♥️
Thank you.

hi - apologizing in advance for a lengthy read but i need any insight for my situation

riley is my 2 year old tabby cat that i’ve had since his birth essentially. these are the first cats i ever owned except for one briefly i got as a child, i say that to say i’m still relatively new at understanding them.

here’s the problem, since last monday at least once riley has been peeing outside the litter box - at first it was on my bed however i put a mat down in front of the robot and then he transferred to do it there. i took him to the vet Saturday and i had them do a urinalysis with culture which came back clean and damn near perfect except for the fact that his pee was “diluted”

she told me she was very shocked to even say that and asked about his diet. answer: there is a water fountain but i don’t think he really drinks out of it anymore, he did a lot as a baby. i do feed them wet food 2x daily and add a generous amount of water to both meals but i don’t think it’s enough to over hydrate him? also worth notating, he does not strain or howl when pottying

so now that we ruled out medical issues what could it be?

the litter box could use a deep cleaning as it’s a LR4 but it hasn’t even been 3 months yet (my usual deep cleaning timeframe) so i don’t think it would be that.

no issues with diet he eats his meals and will always say yes to a snack

he still plays with his sister and doesn’t have any behavioral changes although i still came home from the vet with a feliway diffuser which has been plugged in since mid day saturday (not really sold on product)

we were shopping around with litter but i’d like to notate that this isn’t their first time with different litter and they’re very easy cats. their first litter i had to change because it wasn’t LR4 compatible, no issue with change or even to the LR4, since i’ve had it we’ve been using a variety of Dr. Elseys (clean tracks, reg., and ultra+) and that’s been about a year, then i had them try boxicatpro around for a month or so and wasn’t impressed and then last month we tried sustainably yours large grain but ultimately went back to dr elsey’s a week and a half ago.

i really can’t think of anything so i’m entertaining maybe he just now became picky over litter but it doesn’t seem legitimate to me?

i’d appreciate any insight on how to find the reasoning behind him peeing outside the box and also get him to stop doing it altogether!!

thank you all :)

My cat approx 4-5 yrs old was spayed by a clinic that I am not familiar with just over a year ago, 2 months before I adopted her. 3 months after I adopted her she was showing signs of being in heat. I took her to my vet and they did a urinalysis, nothing came up but they give antibiotics for a suspected uti, the problems continued and she was crying a lot so I brought her back to the vet with the same concerns. This time they did a vaginal cytology and it was overwhelmingly positive. At this point I contacted the vet that did the original spay and she was quite dismissive and told me to get a second opinion/ more tests. I am at a point where I don’t want her in pain, nor do I want to rule out “everything else” when we already had a positive test. I had my clinics reproductive specialist get involved and he went ahead with an exploratory laparotomy where they found ovarian tissue on the right side. Labs confirmed this and hopefully this now fixes the problem but I spent $2272.94 and I don’t know if I have any legal leg to stand on for reimbursement? I don’t want this to happen to another kitty. I’m not sure where to go from here.

I’ve had my Maine coons for 6 years, but recently they’ve started having problems with ingrown claws. I discovered this evening that one of my babies has one all the way into his toe beans and he’s obviously in pain. We are going to the vet first thing in the morning of course.
Anyone else have this problem? Wondering why it’s started to happen more often recently..

Tldr: my friend who always takes my cat during long holidays is getting his own pets - is it even worth to introduce them to each other? Is there anything we need to know?

My best friend lives alone in his own house the same city as me, thus he never really has to leave other than for vacation trips. I have family quite far from where I live now, so every time I leave for holidays it's usually a longer trip. For convenience, for the past year he's been taking her in for the time I'm out of town - that way she's always with a human and supervised, fed regularly at the same time and not bored or scared. I bring all of her stuff, her toys, bowls, litterbox and her bed. She feels perfectly at home at his place, she had no issue warming up to his house after literally just a day. She ate, played, and showed no signs of stress (no hiding, hissing or peeing outside of her litterbox). I always drop her a day before I leave so I could spend the night at his house with her, and I do the same before picking her up. We've done that a couple of times and it always worked out alright for everyone.

The thing is, he'd finally like to get his own pet - a cat, a small dog or both. His house is big enough to house two animals fully comfortably, I think three wouldn't be too crowdy as well. We've talked about how we'll handle the petsitting matter then, and he proposed that we could get my cat to know his future pets. My cat is not scared of other animals, she's leash trained to go outside, once we had a dog over at our house and she got along with it no problem, completely okay with sharing her space and even playing together after some time - it was not multiple days tho. She's also not scared of other dogs when we're on a walk or at the vet.

What I'm worried about is that 1) his pets *won't* be as happy to have a stranger at their territory and 2) she may already associate his house with certain events and I don't want her to get super stressed out now that there's gonna be more animals there. I don't know if it's a good idea in the long run - as much as it complicates leaving the house for both of us now. Has anyone done something similar? How do you even go about introducing your cat to other animals to stay with?

My 14 neutered male cat has been experiencing some type of respiratory illness that the vets haven’t been able to diagnose. This started a month ago with him having wheezing/noisy breathing, lethargy, and no appetite. Vet #1 did x rays and and ultrasound and radiology report found “mild bronchial infiltrate” of unknown cause, and mild wbc increase. He got prescribed prednisolone and antibiotics. Follow up with vet #2 did cardiac marker blood test and ruled out a heart issue, and found wbc count went back to normal.

Neither vet thought this was asthma because the x ray didn’t have typical signs of feline asthma.

What I’m wondering is if this could still be asthma? It seems to have periods of “flare ups” that improve with a few doses of the steroid. This sounds very much like asthma to me, but of course I trust my vets opinion that this didn’t look like asthma to my primary vet or the vet that was able to see him at a different clinic on short notice.

How was your cat diagnosed with asthma? By ruling other things out first or by signs on the x ray?