Anyone have experience with cancer?

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Amy and Socks

Amy and Socks

Member Since 2019
We just found out Socks has lung cancer, and the vet didn't mention doing anything extra. He already gets cerenia, probiotics, and a B12 capsule every day. These all started before the cancer diagnosis. I'm just curious if anyone has been through this before and has any suggestions?

His prognosis is 6 months, and he'll be 17 in May, so I'm just looking to make him as comfortable and happy as possible. He's always been a little piggy that will eat any and everything, but he's definitely gotten less enthusiastic recently. He was eating Friskies before his diabetes diagnosis, then he was on Tiki Koolina and After Dark with quail egg for the past year or so, then we switched to Tiki mousse recently when he lost interest in the other (although he still love the quail egg portion), and now he's back to wanting Friskies the past couple days. We just offer a little bit of everything to see what he'll eat that day.

He also seems to eat in a different way, so we're wondering if it has to do with his breathing. Maybe licking up food is harder now? He'll eat Friskies if it's a big chunk he can bite off, but once there are smaller bits, he loses interest. If I scoop them up into a pile on a spoon, he'll eat the mound off the spoon. Not sure if anyone has experience with this and has any tips or ideas to share?

Thanks!
 
How was it diagnosed?
My Thunder has continuing cough like trying to cough up a hairball. It go worse. x-rays showed what looked like a mass in one of his lungs. He lived a good life for almost 8 months. Then he was lethargic and stopped eating. I after I said goodbye, the vet did a partial necropsy which showed a basically non functional lung
 
Have you tried raising the bowl, or serving him on a flat plate (and maybe also raising that?) If he is having some trouble breathing, being down "inside" a bowl may not be comfortable, nor bending or crouching down so much. Or maybe it's that the food is easier to grab off of a spoon. When our Yeti had pancreatitis recently, hubby was spoon-feeding him to make sure he ate. Then he wanted to be spoon-fed even after he was feeling better, took a while to wean him off the spoon. I think he liked the openness and the height.
 
Larry and Kitties said:
How was it diagnosed?
My Thunder has continuing cough like trying to cough up a hairball. It go worse. x-rays showed what looked like a mass in one of his lungs. He lived a good life for almost 8 months. Then he was lethargic and stopped eating. I after I said goodbye, the vet did a partial necropsy which showed a basically non functional lung
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X-ray showed a mass and slightly elevated white count. He doesn't have any coughing, just faster breathing. We took him in to get checked out because he's getting so boney. Sorry to hear about your Thunder.
 
Gracie85 said:
Have you tried raising the bowl, or serving him on a flat plate (and maybe also raising that?) If he is having some trouble breathing, being down "inside" a bowl may not be comfortable, nor bending or crouching down so much. Or maybe it's that the food is easier to grab off of a spoon. When our Yeti had pancreatitis recently, hubby was spoon-feeding him to make sure he ate. Then he wanted to be spoon-fed even after he was feeling better, took a while to wean him off the spoon. I think he liked the openness and the height.
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Yes, we have raised feeders with flat food bowls for all our cats. That was our thought too- the breathing might be affecting the way he eats. Might try to raise it more though to see if that makes a difference. He ate a whole can of Friskies pretty enthusiastically for dinner just now, so that was good. It's funny the way our cats behave sometimes- Socks will eat more if I sit beside him while he's eating. Never had this issue before- he was always the one whoe ate his food in literally 60 seconds and had to be fed separate so he wouldn't eat everyone else's food!
 
We had a cat diagnosed with lung cancer at the rescue. The recommended treatment was prednisolone; sadly the cancer had metastasized everywhere by the time he was diagnosed and we didn't have time to try treatment.

(Editing to clarify that my vet had told me that usually lung cancer is a very slow-moving, often asymptotic cancer that often responds well to treatment. Due to the rescue circumstances, he wasn't diagnosed until he had significant symptoms.)
 
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