I’ve postponed writing this, then thought maybe I just wouldn’t update at all. No one reads this anyway. But pretending it isn’t happening isn’t good for me. We learned from “Inside Out” that Sadness is important to share, right? So even if no one sees it, the sharing is important – for me.

Panther has what her oncologist calls ‘regrowth’. She recommended stopping the electrochemotherapy. There are other things that can be tried, but she doesn’t expect any of it to help realistically. So there was a family meeting and lots of tears, and we have decided to stop treatment and help Panther live her best life for as long as we can with no more pills or needles.

It isn’t fair. She’s a baby. Cancer sucks.

. . . and she is very put out by her continued care.

A mass returned to the same area of her face as her original tumor 3 years ago. It almost shows in the photo – you can see that the right cheek of her face (left side of the photo) is a little larger than the other side. She had surgery to remove the new tumor a little over a week ago, and today we followed up with an oncologist.

We were given several options on how to move forward with her treatment from very aggressive and expensive (and far away) radiation down to doing nothing more and hoping it takes years to come back again. We are likely going to move forward on a middle road of electrochemo therapy. For her, in particular, we understand that this would be less invasive and traumatic for her, less expensive, and have fewer likely side effects, while hopefully still offering good odds on a positive outcome. Seems like it’s all about the odds with cancer treatment.

Considering we took one step up from the ‘do nothing’ level the first time, and got three perfect years with her, we are hoping we can manage at least that well getting a bit more aggressive with her treatment this go around. She is still a very young cat at 5 years old, so we are walking a line between giving her as much time as we can, and giving her heavy drugs that can cause long-term damage to her organs.

From her adoption paperwork, we learned that Panther was handed in over the counter at the shelter as a neonate that required a foster to bottle feed her. So while we don’t know her exact birthdate, we know our guess is probably within a week of the real date. We picked Aug 8th in the window of likely dates for her because it is also International Cat Day.

In bigger news: when she started chemo back at the beginning of the pandemic, her oncologist said that if she survived 2 years without a recurrence, then she was cured. We assume that meant 2 years from finishing chemo, not the start. Either way, she is officially over 2 years cancer free, so it’s time to party!