Testicle tissue almost BLACK?!

We adopted a stray male cat, Bosco, and had him neutered today. When removed, one of Bosco's testicles was normal color (red/pink), but the other was brown to black. The vet had never seen this before. She sent the dark tissue to a lab for analysis, but it will take a week to get the results. 

Could it be an injury or an infection? Or testicular cancer? He is a fully grown male.  

Any feedback or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I can't find anything online about this other than "intact males can get testicular cancer," but nothing about what it looks like or treatment. Thanks in advance for your comments. 

Hi,

I don't know anything about this myself, but I'm bumping your post to the front of the queue so that others will see it.

Hopefully you'll get some help soon.

I haven't heard of this before either. I just wondered---is his fur/skin coloring over one testicle dark? That maybe could affect the coloring inside too, although I'd hope a vet would have seen that before. Otherwise my next thought would be an old injury. that it's nothing serious!

Hi,

Thanks for the great question. Bosco is a black cat, so all his fur is black. I wondered if that affected the black testicle tissue, too, but since the other testicle was pink, I doubt it. We are still waiting for an answer as of 9/12/14, but I will post when I know something so others may know, too. 

CatCouple

Big scare is over and Bosco is fine. The lab that did the work decided to conduct "additional tests," which made us imagine the worst. The 3-5 day turn around was in fact 12 days. Turns out, the testicle was twisted and damaged sometime in the past and the tissue had died. Since it had now been removed for neutering, no further treatment was needed.

The vet did add, however, that there are cases where the infection could have led to a very bad infection, but we would have known that something was wrong with him. This cat is strong and healthy now that we have been getting him medical treatment over the past weeks; he didn't exibit signs of serious illness.

No one, even two vets, had ever seen a testicle like this, though. So THAT is what a black testicle means! Hope that helps anyone else who comes across this issue. Thanks for the support while we were waiting to hear!

Thanks for the update. It's good to know what a black testicle means and I'm glad there was nothing seriously wrong with your boy.

I'm taking our latest foster kitten, Toby, to be neutered tomorrow morning.

Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly.