The Brad Hole

I got Ian in early '99 back when I was single and living in an apartment. I'd wanted a pet, but a dog was out of the question as I was working all day and didn't have the time to devote. I'm not really a cat person, but I went to a pet store and saw Ian. He'd been "returned" and was a 1.5 year old adult. He was outgoing and gregarious and, dare I say it - "dog-like" so I figured what the heck. I hadn't really considered the issue of humane society vs. pet store at the time but I did think that his odds of being adopted as an adult were somewhat slim which figured into my decision.

Since then, he's been a good cat. He's really only had one behavioral issue - he will pee in the sheets of a bed on occasion, so we've simply restricted him from the bedroom. He's always been popular and friendly with visitors - Beth's mom independently declared him as "dog-like" as well, so I know I'm not the only one. ;-) When we got our dogs 2 years ago, we had a hard time integrating them with the cats. So hard in fact that we maintain a baby gate in our hallway to let the dogs and cats have roam of the house separately. As a result, Ian spends most of his days in my office with me and at night he gets to roam around the whole house.

So fast forward to a few weeks ago. Ian will be 10 in August, and recently he'd been drooling more than usual to the point where his chest was moist and his paws were starting to stay dirty - and he stunk a lot. If you google "cat drooling" you'll notice that it's a catch-all: cats can have drooling issues for pretty much any reason. So it was a bit of a shock when we took him in Wednesday and discovered that his problem was due to an ulcerous inch-long tumor under his tongue and the stink wasn't cat shit stuck to his moist paws, it was rotting flesh from the tumor.

They did some hasty surgery yesterday morning and the vet believes he got it all, but because of the size and location, he wasn't sure. He sent a sample in for biopsy to determine the exact nature, but the impression I got was that because the tumor grew so quickly and turned ulcerous, it's more likely than not to be bad news. He was hoping to be able to tell us how long we'd have with Ian. We should find out by Tuesday what his long-term prognosis might be, but I'm afraid the answer might still be "we don't know." The tumor was roughly an inch deep, a centimeter wide and a few millimeters in height.

Anyway, Ian is back at home now, and appears to be doing fine with one large exception: he's having trouble eating. He tries, but he just can't seem to get any in his mouth. This also complicates giving him his medication (1 ground-up pill for pain, 1 as an antibiotic). The doctor said that the mouth and tongue heal fast so I'm hopeful that he'll be able to dig in before too long; his continual tries are encouraging. He's also fairly active, and I hope that continues.

Ian is the first pet I bought for and by myself, and although I still am not a "cat person", I always envisioned him dying of old age. Hopefully that's his plan too.