S.O.S. - Kinney has anorexia/anemia

Dan, I went back and read your thread again and noted that you already had an ultrasound, I am sorry, I was reading your more recent threads and discussion of ultrasounds. I don't really think you will need very many overall. In a year's time, Toby had four but two were before we even began treatment. Your doctor is wise in saying just go to surgery and don't try to do the aspirate. Most vets feel that nothing really subsitutes for going in there and seeing the tissue themselves, and an aspirate may not actually find the lymphocytes that will diagnose your boy. 

if I had to do it over again, I would have gone from the x-ray directly to surgery and saved myself the money. Also Toby may not have actually needed his last ultrasound, but we wanted to be sure that his cancer was taking over.

So at this point you should be able to set your boy up for surgery to go in and remove the mass and get a pathology report all at the same time. We did a consult with another vet before sending Toby in for surgery. Like you and your boy, our Toby was losing weight and had already had two ultrasounds and we were very hesitant to move forward without knowing really anything. It seemed very strange to us and hard on our boy. If you trust your existing vet, you might want to call them back up and talk to them about the outcomes if you simply do the surgery. And I have to tell you, what made us go ahead and allow the vet to go in there, was the knowledge that our boy had a mass and that nobody had actually gotten to where they diagnosed him with cancer. All we could think was, here is this mass and we can't just leave him there not knowing if we could have just taken it out and cured him.

 No matter what, get your vet to prescribe the sucralfate for his tummy, it will make him feel better and if he has bleeding ulcers it can fix the anemia. My Toby was never anemic during his entire illness. I gave my boy both the sucralfate and 1/2 pepsid along with the prednisolone and that helps a lot, especially given that the prednisolone is really hard on their stomachs.

There is another cat on here, Muffin, whose parents decided to just do the surgery. Muffin had a great outcome and a long remission. You can check that thread too!

man that's really sad. my first kitty which I got when I was six had a problem with his thyroid and couldn't put on weight no matter how much he ate.

BarbB: I read your entire 16 page thread tonight.  My deepest sympathies.

So, Kinney is eating double-time for all of the weight that he has lost in the last weeks.  I called my regular vet up today and asked for a refill on the prednisone, and what he thought of Sucralfate or Pepcid for his ulcer.  Also, what is my plan for one week, two weeks, one month?  My initial goal when I brought him home from the ER was to stabilize him and re-evaluate where I would go. 

A thought that I am having reading other posts of cats with digestive issues is why has this happened to him?  Kinney has always been a 95% kibble eater (IAMS or RC 33 - both served freely), supplemented by tiny amounts of Gerber meat baby foods, but has always had a huge tendency to throw it up, then get turned off to eating altogether, then either resume eating kibble with no problems - or - go through another bout of the same.  I would say that I have to clean up after him at least weekly, sometimes much more.  Since he has been mostly eating canned food recently (Science Diet A/D, just tried Wellness Chicken today - he liked a lot), he has not thrown up at all.  My brother nursed along a dog with lymphoma for years with a homemade raw diet that he swears by and he still does it for his two new dogs as preventative.

I always poo-pooed the whole raw diet thing, but here I am now with a 5yo cat who is sick with basically digestive issues - and who has eaten kibble his whole life.  My other two boys are probably overweight from their kibble consumption.  I am thinking to try some kind of nutritional change.  I hope I have time...

I am glad Kinney is back to eating.  Myself, I worry when Ritz eats too much.  And worry more when she doesn't eat.

Raw feeding can create miracles. 

Read Carolina's thread.  One of her cats hadn't had a solid poop in 14 months and had severe IBD.  Read some of the stickies on the Raw forum. 

Read the transition tips; and remember, you can start with commercial raw, you don't have to raise your own rabbits and mice and feed whole prey!

If you decide to go that route, feel free to post in that thread.  We'll be with you every morsel of the way.

The raw diet is considered the "cancer starving diet" for dogs and cats. They're carnivores after all. Dogs may be adaptive: but cats are not. They are hard wired as obligate carnivores. The retain some ability to digest carbs. But while people and dogs have five different systems to digest carbs, cats have just one. The theory is that they retained this because of the small amount of carbs in the stomach content of their prey.

I transitioned Lazlo (and all of my cats) to a raw diet during his last month of chemo. Of course I believe eating raw has helped keep him in remission. :lol3:

But for just some basic info about species-appropriate feeding (not necessarily raw), this is a great resource: http://www.catinfo.org It's written by a vet.

So what did your vet say about treating the ulcers? :cross:

My vet did finally come around on the use of Pepcid and Sucralfate, as well as calling in my renewal for the prednisone.  I asked to have them all made into suspensions, so I can just squirt them in rather than try and pill him.   I hate to add too many meds at the moment as just the relatively low dose of pred along with the Cypro has him eating more since he got home from the ER than he did in the prior four weeks.  He wants to eat every few hours.  It very much reminds me of your Lazlo story once he got the Cerenia injection (although Kinney has not had that).

I was thinking the crunchies must be hard on an ulcer (rough, dry).  He has never been a wet food eater except for a few little teases, but he is adapting.  I can't help thinking that the wet food would be easier on his stomach than the kibble (which he used to throw up fairly often, still whole and unchewed).

It appears to me from reading on the forums here that there are more than a few kitties on prednisone.  I am practicing trying to "read gums" so maybe I would have any kind of advance warning against the anemia becoming a crisis again.

I understand the worry about too many meds. But the addition of the pepcid and the sucralfate should only make him feel better and better. :nod:

The wet food will be easier on his tummy - on all of his organs, in fact, because of the moisture content. One of the reasons it's cheaper to make your own cat food is because with canned food you're paying for a lot of water. But I think you'll understand just how important it is for cats if you read the CatInfo.org website. Dr. Pierson also has a section on transition tips. (And using crushed kibble on top of the wet is one of them). What will be even better for him is canned foods that are high in protein and low carbohydrate. Many of the fishy foods fit this bill, but they're best to be avoided other than as infrequent additions to the rotation. Dr. Pierson put a lot of work into providing the information on the carb content of most commonly available canned foods. A link to it is in the Commercial Cat Food section. When I was feeding canned food, I looked for anything that was 10% or less carbohydrates on a dry matter basis (the only way to compare foods is to remove the moisture content, and just look at what's left). That is the center column of her foods list. :nod:

Awww Dan thank you so much for your kind words. I am glad if my thread was able to help you. Someone should get some mileage out of all that bad stuff. It has been very hard not to have Toby around. He had such personality, we always said he was the celebrity of our house- greeting the cable tv man and everyone at the front door, laying in the middle of the card table while we played poker and put chips on him. He loved being at the center of everything. He loved his petting and let us hold him and hug him all over, and he would purr so very loudly. He was much more like a dog, and we loved to pet him because he was so expressive and open in his appreciation, his eyes would roll back and he would give a huge sigh of happiness through his electric purrs. He is very missed and I still say his name by accident when talking to my cats, and put out extra dishes for feeding. I can't even talk about him with my husband because I start crying. It isn't that I don't talk about him because I don't want to cry, it is just that it is too sad.

Yes I heard from many vets that "Cancer loves Carbs". My boy Toby also loved his kibble. He only stopped eating it after he threw it up to the point where he figured out that it was making him sick. 

My best success for transitioning my cats was by using Stella and Chewy's freeze dried raw food. It is the raw equivalent of instant coffee. You can feed it as dry food. It comes in little round plugs, and you can break them up into smaller pieces and ashes with your fingers, You also can put water in there and "reconstitute" it as raw meat.

I just saw at PetCo that Nature's Variety makes a grain free dry food that also includes freeze dried raw food http://www.naturesvariety.com/Instinct/RawBoost/cat/chicken. This may also be a good way to transition. 

I had the best success with Toby by switching from the regular kibble to grain free kibble (I used BG grain free which is made by Merrick) and then to Stella/Chewy's freeze dried raw. He never really loved the freeze dried raw, but some of my other cats think it is great! Switching that way is a good slow transition away from carb-y kibble. And as LDG said above,putting crushed on top of wet. I never tried that but as you know from the threads, Toby never had much problem eating through most of his illness, not until more towards the end.

I also used grain free wet food. Toby's vet said that most Fancy Feast CLASSIC wet foods were grain free and therefore fine for him, but the other types (grilled, flaked, etc.) were bad for him. Other brands that she approved were Soulistic and any other wet foods that were marked grain free. There is a brand called Tiki Cat that he liked but he got tired of it pretty quick. But he was on chemo and I think that affected what he liked or disliked on any given day. 

As far as what could have caused your boy to get lymphoma, it is true that a cat with irritable bowel disease can morph into lymphoma, i.e. the intestinal lining becomes scarred from the disease and the cells morph into small cell lymphoma. But usually there are more signs of IBD to begin with. Lymphoma is just more prevalent in cats these days :-( :-( :-(. Having said that, no matter what it is very helpful for your cat to stop the grain kibble as that is a magnet for cancer. 

I also wanted to say, I agree with what LDG said about in terms of the pred and pepsid and sucralfate. If you have ever taken prednisolone or other steroid, then you know it is really hard on your stomach. It makes you feel really empty. That is why so many people and animals eat a lot when they are on steroids and gain weight. It is definitely good for them, but also the sucralfate and pepsid help with the stomach acid and lining of the stomach. You probably saw in my threads about keeping an eye out for your boy not being too jumpy from the prednisolone. It can make you feel wired and jumpy. My boy vocalized a lot and finally we were able to cut back on it. It definitely helped his inflammation but we wanted to make sure he still had quality of life and as you know from my thread, he kept his weight up once he was treated so we cut it back a little. 

On the ulcer, anything that produces a lot of stomach acid can be hard on the ulcer, including prednisolone, which is why most of the time it is accompanied by pepsid and/or sucralfate both of which are great. 

As far as him having a lot of meds, Toby was really good about taking his meds and not caring about it. My vets were emphatic that if he ever didn't want x or y med, to be sure and use something like a pat of butter or whipped cream to put it in, and not to mix it into his food or do anything like that to put him off eating. This was never a problem for us, but it is just good FYI. 

I like that you are squirting the meds in, instead of pills. Another thing you can/should do if you have to do a pill, is get a syringe with water and after you push the pill into the back of your cat's mouth, squirt the water in there so he swallows. Most cats actually don't hate that, bc the water washes out any bad pill taste and helps them swallow. You can do that with a little tuna juice or something too, or give them a treat after a pill to take the bad taste away. 

BarbB: I have had cats in my life for over 40 years and there are some that have a spiritual bond to our deepest souls. They are angels.  As I was reading your story of Toby, I could see he was something exceptional to you.  I lost my two special brothers about three years back and I still talk to them on my walks.  I always said I would meet them on the other side.  I'm not over them yet, maybe never.  Why it is hard for me to be going through this so soon with a 5yo.  I didn't think I would have to face anything too traumatic for years and years with young boys only.

I was born and raised in Warrenville by the way, so a Chicago connection here.  Where I live in PA. reminds me much of living on the banks of the DuPage...

I didn't know pred was hard on Kinney's stomach.  I have been feeding him every couple of hours because he seems to want it, but also because I have had stomach ulcers myself and remembering small meals often help to put me on the mend.   I was just looking again as his discharge from the ER and he had gotten down to 7 pounds - starting from 11.

I have to take a wait and see attitude on this.  I don't have a definate diagnosis because they said they were not able to do a needle biopsy and I elected to forgo a surgical biopsy in his weakened state.  I could see in your thread that you stammered at the surgery decision also.  It is really hard on them.

Yes you are so right,Toby was very exceptional to me. And I agree, I can't imagine why this should happen with a kitty so young :-( as your Kinney. Your cats are gorgeous and they look very healthy in your picture. Toby was 11 when it happened to him but as you know, it was from his vaccine :-(.So you know from your other kitties, how hard it is. I always say to myself that I will meet Toby in the next life and/or on the other side and I have told him too, many times. I believe that without any doubt, and that you will meet your kitties there too.

It is so funny that you were born and raised in Warrenville, I live in DuPage in Wood Dale west of O'Hare. But I was born and raised in PA, Pittsburgh and my brother and father now live in Mountaintop PA (very close to Wilkes-Barre) and one of my sisters lives in Philadelphia and also has a place in Ocean City NJ. We spend a lot of time there bc all my family is there LOL. You live in a very beautiful part of Pennsylvania!

Yes too, we took a while before deciding to let them do surgery on Toby. We were just in complete shock and I am sure you are too. Plus we had never had any cats that had surgery and we had no idea what it would be like for him to recover, especially being sick already. So yes I know exactly why you would want to take some time, especially with your boy having lost so much weight and being anemic. I too would want to make sure he put weight on and was running around again before doing anything more. I can tell you that the surgery here was expensive, but we took him to the best known place in Chicagoland so we knew what we were facing. And we got two different vet opinions plus the surgeon himself, before we decided to go ahead. 

On the Muffin thread, they did the surgery only http://www.thecatsite.com/t/244032/muffin-bad-news-vet-visit-today  and I think he is doing very well now, over one year later. Every case is different of course. If it were me, I would keep calling the vet and asking more questions (where might the anemia be coming from, what is the mass likely to be, etc.), especially if the vet practice seems to know what they are doing. That way you are less likely to make a wrong decision. There is no true "wrong" decision but I guess I mean, the best outcome for your cat with the infomation available to you. I felt like we were running around to everyone and in the end it was that one vet saying "no vet will really know until they are able to get inside and see what is up". The surgeon and original vet had said that same thing, in so many words. So with three vets saying it, I understood, finally. And like I said, in the end it was a decision based on our understanding that there was no other way to know what was really going on with him. Augh! I am praying for you and Kinney and hoping he feels better each day. You will know what to do  

Kinney continues recovery from anorexia on pred and Cypro.  His ultrasound diagnosis was an ulcerated mass on his duodenum with enlarged liver and spleen, so I am taking the approach that he has a peptic ulcer that caused his anemia.  He seems to have the classic symptoms of an ulcer in that he wants to eat about every two hours (at least he wants to eat at all!).  My medical book said peptic ulcers take four-six weeks to heal over and frequent small meals offer relief.  He has stopped eating kitty litter at least and his gums are very reddish-pink.

I had another discussion with my vet today and asked him if we can assume that what was causing his anemia was the ulcerated duodenum and he said we can't be sure that is what was causing it.  What?  I guess I will just make the decision then that it was and treat Kinney like he has a peptic ulcer anyway.  The pred seems to be doing something for him, even if it is just masking over the problems - he is gaining weight, made a first poop and not sleeping every minute.

BarbB: I was reading something you said about the pred making them bad candidates for surgery.  In addition, I am wondering what chances he would have because of following:

I looked up the duodenum in my medical books and it is a U-shaped connection from the stomach to the intestines that expands and contracts with the stomach, also where the bile dumps in from the liver along with the insulin from the pancreas - a most complicated passageway.  It explains the strange look on the ER doctor's face explaining surgical options to me about trying to piece together something workable from what was left if the mass was removed.  He made it sound like there wouldn't be enough left to work with.

I guess I am just going to try building Kinney up for awhile and hope for a miracle - he is looking much better now, and just take it day by day.  Maybe this is all we get.  If we get to some milestone like a few weeks or a month from now and he seems more normal, maybe I will have them do another ultrasound on him to see what shape his duodenum is in at that point.  I guess I am reading in the threads that pred may give only temp relief, but right at the moment - its pretty good as compared to a week ago.

Cancer itself often causes anemia. A bleeding ulcer obviously would aggravate it.

The questions you are asking are exactly why you should consider finding an oncologist surgeon. Your vet will provide the "referral" if necessary. Seeing the surgeon isn't a commitment to do surgery. It is an opportunity to speak to a professional with specific training who can best answer your questions on risk vs. reward, probabilities, possibilities, etc, so you can make an informed decision about how to move forward.

Pred does not heal bleeding ulcers, nor does cypro.

I'm SO glad Kinny feels better and the smaller, more frequent meals are helping.

Personally, I understand the decision to give a terminally ill cat palliative care. I do not understand not giving a cat with bleeding ulcers medication to treat them.

I pray for Kinny, and hope you get your miracle, because without treatment (even for just his ulcer) that is the only thing that will help. :heart2:

Hi LDG,

I think Dan said in an earlier thread that the vet said yes to the pepsid and sucralfate and renewed the other scripts as well. And Dan has formulated them into liquids that he can inject.

Yes I agree it is bet to get an oncologist opinion about the location of the mass and the spectrum of possibilities for outcome. I am not familiar with why the mass would be ulcerated but that is a question I would ask the vet and the oncologist.

I'd also ask the cost of a surgery, it doesn't cost anything to ask. Dan, in the case of my cat the surgery was pretty minor. In the case of Muffin there was definitely a mass removed and it was a bigger deal. Yes I would worry if it would be complicated to deal with the mass in your Kinney. A vet mentioned a bowel resection talking to me but then it turned out to be lymphatic tissue and they did no surgery. I forgot to mention, you can also negotiate as to what the fee is depending on the surgery, i.e. if they open him and it is inoperable and they close him right up, that should be less money than a resection. I actually had that happen with my kitty Lulu, they shaved off a huge amount of money on a surgery where it turned out she didn't need a large mass removal as it was a tiny cyst with a lot of fluid in a mass surrounding the cyst. So they didn't need the room that long nor the surgeon's time or skill.

I'm so glad to hear your Kinney is feeling better. And yes giving him a lot of small meals may help him. I'd still give the 1/2 of a 10 mg pepsid at least in the evening. When Toby was sick it was in the morning bc I was not giving him pepsid in the evening, and in the morning he always slept in, so he wouldn't get his pepsid in time for him to eat. So that was when he was most often sick. I figured it out after a while and gave him half in the morning and half in the evening. Even before he was diagnosed, it was in the AM when he vomited most. And you saw my thread so you know when the cancer came back, he was vomiting into his food :-(. 
 

Ah, thanks Barb. It sounded from the last post as if all Kinny was being given was the pred and the appetite stimulant.

Well actually, all Kinney is getting is 7.5 mg of pred now.  I haven't needed to give him the Cypro in the last two days since he wants to eat constantly.  When I had the conversation with the vet on Friday about Pepsid and Sucralfate for what I thought was an arrived conclusion that his ulcerated duodenum was the cause of his anemia, the vet said that we didn't know that to be true.  He declined to give me a script for Sucralfate unless I would really push for it and said I could give Kin a half a Pepcid if I really wanted to and that it probably wouldn't kill him.  I have not done that with the Pepcid, although I have them here.  Kinney hasn't thrown up since being home from the ER last week and I checked the litter box in his room when I got home and there was a solid poop in it, so his digestion is working and he is eating non-stop.  Whether the anemia is still under the surface or not, I don't know.  I feel like my vet is backing away.

A new wrinkle:  I was out all day yesterday, so put Kinney in a bedroom by himself so he could eat all the wet food he wanted without any competition from my two brothers, Kyle and Kegan who are like vultures.  When I got home, there was clear vomit on the floor in various spots plus a whole undigested meal (wet food) of what the brothers had eaten earlier.  So it was either Kyle or Keegie that threw up - they never do!  Never!  I cleaned up the vomit, fed them their evening wet food dinner, but today Kyle isn't eating anything at all.  A couple licks of baby food this afternoon - nothing more.  Kyle is usually my best eater.  He will usually eat virtually anything I put in front of him.

The friend I was visiting yesterday gave me a couple of sample pieces of Primal raw food from her cat's stash to try out on the crew.  I put a couple of cubes of it out (trifling really) which nobody had any interest in except Kyle who ate them all - not very much at all.  I can hardly believe that that tiny bit of raw would keep him from eating anything today.  I think he has licked more blood from food packaging than that in the past with no after effects.  Since I have the Cypro still around from Kinney, I am considering giving Kyle a dot of it on his ear.  I have never had Kyle not eating.

I think I am going crazy here.

I'm surprised your vet was so odd about the pepsid, maybe in response to ulcer treatment, altho all my vets gave it to offset the prednisolone. Toby never did have ulcers. That is a high dose of prednisolone and side effects include increased stomach acid and ulcers, http://www.webmd.com/drugs/mono-938...id=6007&drugname=prednisone+oral&pagenumber=6.
As far as the vet backing away, they won't give you a firm diagnosis without the surgery, they will only confirm what they can tell from each test independently. Your vet sounds pretty good in that regard, sticking with the facts so that you are not connecting dots the wrong way.
As far as your other kitties, there is a possibility they are affected by the changes in your house. If your sick kitty is on that high dose of pred and separated from the others he may have been vocalizing in your absence and that could have thrown everyone into a spin. Or as you said, maybe the other food disagreed with them. One thing is for sure, cats are creatures of structure and routine, and they are off their routine and structure.

Kyle's appetite returned after a day and a half of not eating.  So back to just worrying about Kinney.

I got a renewal on the pred, so I was very nervous at the compounding pharmacy verifying that the dosing was the same as what I had gotten at the ER.  The dosing syringe the ER gave me started to get stuck all of the time and when I rinsed it out to try and unclog it, the measurement writing on the syringe rinsed off.  What's in that pred, battery acid?  I got more dosing syringes from the pharmacy.  He is getting .35ml of a 20mg/1ml suspension, so I calculate that as 7.5mg daily.  I have had a couple of horrified responses at that dose.  Is it an abnormally high amount?

He seems in very good spirits, with most excellent appetite.  Even jumped for toys last night.

On the issue of the Pepcid, my vet said he could not conclude from the diagnosis thus far that it was warranted.  When I had an elderly CRF cat with stomach acid, it was pretty apparent with him burping constantly.  I had said earlier that I thought the Pepcid made my previous cat burpy, but now I remember that I gave him the Pepcid to relieve his burpiness.  Kinney doesn't seem to have any visible digestive issues like vomiting, stomach gurgling, diarrea or looking like he has indigestion, so we have just skated by without it. 

I have never pilled Kinney and would not imagine an easy time of it - he is not a good patient.  I asked the compounding pharmacist when I was there if he thought I could make my own Pepcid suspension.  Actually, I knew my own answer but wanted to see what he would say.  My previous CRF cat who also had hyper-T and was on a bunch of meds for years, I used to grind up his pills in a mortar and pestal and mix with just enough baby food to make a paste I could swab into his mouth, rather than wrestle with pills.  So that would be my plan with Kinney.  However, since he isn't displaying any physical symptoms, I am not sure how I would tell how long to give it or at what dose. 

I know myself that the fewer medicines in my stomach, the better.  BTW: meowmy is having some digestive issues as well, probably from worrying myself sick.

A teeny, tiny success with Kinney is that he has become accustomed to eating an increasingly wet food diet.  He seems to like the Wellness chicken, sometimes with a little A/D mixed in.  Bear in mind, one month ago when this all started, he was pretty much a 95% kibble eater - so I had no ammo at all.  I have been doling out the kibble sparingly to see if I can transition all three to eating canned.  I have been reading LDG's thread with the raw food transition.  My two brothers have always liked canned food, so they are an easy switchover.  Kinney has been like starting from scratch - previously he would only have little spoons of baby food once in a while.

I will stop by the vet's office today and get some more A/D as a flavor enhancer.  We have been through about 15-20 cans of it so far.  It seems a little rich for a steady diet, thus the introduction of the Wellness chicken.  Kinney likes mushy, pate type food.  Any other suggestions welcome.  Anyway, I will ask him about the 7.5mg dose of pred long range and also for a surgery doctor.  Kinney is looking like he might survive a small operation to obtain a tissue sample at this point.  A remarkable difference from one week ago when I brought him home from the ER - his was 7.5 pounds then.  I will buy a digital scale today and start weighing him regularly, taking a queue from LDG and her meticulous recordkeeping.

Thanks for the support.

Dan32 said:

Kyle's appetite returned after a day and a half of not eating.  So back to just worrying about Kinney.

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I think the problem was too much new food too fast. Raw requires very different mechanisms to digest, so transitions are always done best slowly. Vomiting during a raw transition means you're going too fast.

Dan32 said:

On the issue of the Pepcid, my vet said he could not conclude from the diagnosis thus far that it was warranted.  When I had an elderly CRF cat with stomach acid, it was pretty apparent with him burping constantly.  I had said earlier that I thought the Pepcid made my previous cat burpy, but now I remember that I gave him the Pepcid to relieve his burpiness.  Kinney doesn't seem to have any visible digestive issues like vomiting, stomach gurgling, diarrea or looking like he has indigestion, so we have just skated by without it.

... However, since he isn't displaying any physical symptoms, I am not sure how I would tell how long to give it or at what dose.

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I'd just like to point out that there were no visible signs that an ulcer was developing, or a tumor was growing. Just because you can't see symptoms doesn't mean problems aren't happening. The pepcid suppresses acid production so that ulcers can heal. :dk:

Dan32 said:

  Any other suggestions welcome.  Anyway, I will ask him about the 7.5mg dose of pred long range and also for a surgery doctor.  Kinney is looking like he might survive a small operation to obtain a tissue sample at this point.  A remarkable difference from one week ago when I brought him home from the ER - his was 7.5 pounds then. 

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It's amazing what difference an appetite can make!

The "usual" dose of pred when cats are in chemotherapy or being "made comfortable" due to cancer is 5mg. For most cats in that 7 - 15 pound range, that is considered an anti-inflammatory dose. 10mg is an immune-suppressive dose. So I'm not sure what 7.5mg is.

I think the oncologist surgeon will be the best guide to what will be best for Kinny - whether that's surgery, or medication to make him comfortable - and they will follow your cue on what you're comfortable with and what you're not comfortable with and vs. your budget and outlook. For example, here is a blog post written by small animal oncologist, on working with pet parents on the decision to treat or not to treat (as re: chemotherapy). http://www.petmd.com/blogs/thedailyvet/jintile/2013/jan/can-dog-be-too-old-for-cancer-treatment

Continued vibes for Kinny.