Throat lump and story

Our cat Cordelia (Cordy) had surgery today to get a mass out of her throat/thyroid area.  I thought i would share her symptoms and what is happening in case others run into the same symptoms or situations.

She weighed 17lbs in 2011 and consistently was losing weight.  She is 8.66lbs now.  we kept taking her in and they couldn't find anything wrong.  some times had urinary issues and was on antibiotics but still consistently losing weight.

finally we had the vet take some fluid out in the throat mass area and there was nothing out of the ordinary.  we were given the cancer speech and putting her down or doing a biopsy and sending it in to the university to see what it is exactly.  we decided to do a biopsy for a few reasons.  

One she is active.  she doesn't mope around and act like she doesn't want to do things.  very agile and jumps around on counters, etc.  so body wise seems to be OK.

and Two, we finally switched her to wet cat food and she ate that for awhile but when we switched her to baby food she DEVOURED  it.  i mean 4 jars a day and ate it all.  It just seemed like she didn't want to eat solid type food (maybe it hurt going down her throat) so we knew she was hungry and her appetite was there.  she even gained almost a half a lb in a week.  she used to weigh 8.3 and the next week (day of surgery) she weighed 8.66.

Her complete symptoms are below.

1. constant puking (at least once a day at one point)

2. peeing on carpet (not like her)

3. consistent weight loss (even though she was starving!) - wouldn't eat dry food and barley wet food but devoured baby food)

4. dandruff/rugged coat and she constantly picked at her fur and pulled it out

5. felt lump on her throat but touching it never seemed to bother her

so today the vet surgeon said the xrays came back clean.  there was nothing at all in her lungs and instead of just the biopsy he just wanted to get it out completely.  We opted for that.  So he said he thinks he got it all out but there was ALOT of fluid in it.  he had to drain it first and then surgery remove it.  They showed it to us but they are going to send the entire thing to the university to see exactly what we are dealing with here.  we are being optimistic.

Oh and when she got home she RAN to the kitchen and jump up the counter for baby food.  she about took off my wifes hand pouring it in.  

I'll update next week on what we find out and our next steps.  PS - the surgery costs and sending it in were $475 in case others wanted to know for comparing.

i know during the process of all this i was googling the symptoms and noticed a lot of information on forums from other people so thought i would share our story. 

Thank you for sharing. I hope it was just some type of cyst. :cross:

Please do keep us posted!

And you may want to consider posting in our nutrition forum about ideas for feeding her a high protein, meat-based diet. Given her love of baby food, you may want to consider a home cooked diet - it's not hard to make it balanced. We also have a sub-forum for raw and home-cooked food.

Many vibes for your girl!

Yes, many vibes for your little one

You DO need to be aware that baby food is not nutritionally complete for cats though, so if you are going to continue feeding that as her only food, you will need to find a way to supplement it.  We can help, as Laurie mentioned.

Making a home cooked meal for cats is about as easy as tossing in a couple of chicken thighs and some chicken livers into a covered baking dish with a little water, baking them, then putting them in the food processor with the juices, along with a supplement that includes taurine and vitamins and calcium, etc., maybe an egg or two and you're pretty much good to go.  We've got some recipes and can tell you where to get the supplements already made up unless you want to make up your own.  Easy Peasy.  And you can make it as thick or thin as you want, depending on how much water you add to the food processor.    I tell you, the last batch I made smelled good enough to eat myself .  And one of my pickiest cats LOVED it.

Thanks for the tips. Yeah if we can add anything to the baby food for now we are open to ideas.

She is up to 9.2lbs now and we get her staples out from the surgery next week where we will see if she gained even more weight back.

If she likes it, Call of the Wild (by Wysong) makes any plain meat 100% nutritionally complete for cats.  You could give them a call and see if it would make baby food complete.  I would think it would.  Your only issue would be if Cordelia likes it.  Some cats love it (one of mine does) and some cats don't.  LDG has 8 cats, and I'm not sure how many of hers like it.  Wysong will send you a pretty large sample of it if you ask them, but it takes a week or so to get it (and I'm making an assumption here that you are in the U.S., if you are not, then all bets are off).  

If you are in Canada, there is a product called TC Feline Plus, which is very similar to Call of the Wild, and they have smaller "sample" packages for sale to Canadians, I believe.  Again, you could call them to see if their product would work with baby food meat, but I don't know why not.

But hopefully after her staples come out, she won't need to stay on baby food and you will be able to transition her back to cat food

Update from vet/university testing:

Universtiy said it was a Cystic Thyroid Carcinoma and little chance of recurrence!  The recommendation from them was to remove it which was done the day of the biopsy surgery already, so we are pretty excited about this news.  

She is up to 9.4lbs (she was down to 8.3lbs at one point) already and we bought some chicken livers and all that to start preparing some meals for her.  

BTW, here she is 


here she is after surgery to take out the mass around her thyroid.

Great news .  Oh my, she's a beauty, but WOW, that's some incision