Sucks. My cat, who is about 17, has mamory gland cancer. She had a tumor taken out and that' how I found out. I'm not going to do radiation therapy, as I heard nothing but bad things about it for animals. Basically, there's not much I can do except keep getting the tumors cut out until she get's to weak to go through surgeries. I don't know how I can keep affording them ether.

Wow, at 17 surgery isn't that good for them either. We just lost a cat to cancer about 2 years ago, and had to weigh the option of chemotherapy. We got a couple of opinions from the vets and they felt she'd probably only live a few weeks whether we treated it or not; they gave a mediocre probability of her surviving the operation. We brought her home so she could be in familiar surroundings till the end. Seemingly she was not in much pain and at least we didn't add to it. It's never a pleasant occasion, but I hope we did the right thing.

Good luck with your decision!

If you're like me and have as much love and respect for animals as people then I expect it's going to hit you hard when the dreaded day comes. If it's any consolation, 17 years is a very good stretch for a cat. Just make sure that she leaves this world feeling loved. There's not much else you can do under the circumstances. You have my deepest sympathy, but you will end up having and loving another cat after this one no matter how much you may think you won't. Once a cat lover, always a cat lover, no matter how much it hurts to lose one.

Cheers, Slipstreem.

I am sorry for you, and hope this POV might be of some comfort:


My vet had this to say about painful extraordinary procedures (paraphrasing):
It is one thing to perform painful procedures on a human. Not because a human life is worth more than an animal's (that is a topic for another discussion and irrelevant to this) but because a human can understand that the pain today is for a better tomorrow. An animal has no concept of future reward at the cost of today's comfort.