Misty Grey

So it has been two weeks.  Misty is curled up on my lap right now as I write this.  She sleeps there much more comfortably now than she did the first day she tried it.  I have been putting a blanket over my lap, it helps her feet not fall down between my knees when she curls in that direction.  They still get in her way sometimes even though she has one less. I don’t have any particularly different photos for today so I thought I’d put together a comparison like some of the other bloggers did – people seem to appreciate that, and I found it interesting.   The photos are stretched – I am not really sure why it does that, and  I can’t find any way to fix it, but if you click on them then they are correctly proportioned again.  I’ve made two comparisons, one is how it looks when she is sitting up, the other is when she is lying down.  I didn’t get any very clear shots of the scar early on, at least that are coming up on my google auto-back-ups, so the Day 3 photo is kind of blurry, and there isn’t one from her lying down that early so the earlier one in that pair is from Day 6.  I am glad to see the difference and realize her fur is growing back finally.  I think everything looks ship-shape, but I can’t wait til tomorrow when she gets those stitches out – they seem like they must be pulling on her skin, and the ends are kind of prickly and some of them now poke back toward her now from her sleeping on them – they MUST be itchy.  She’s been very good about not messing with them, though she seems more and more interested in licking the area.  She’s gotten more energetic about cleaning the rest of herself too since she stopped receiving the buprenorphine.

Speaking of the buprenorphine and the cleaning of Misty, that stuff seemed to give her some digestive troubles that made the litterbox a rather treacherous place for a kitty figuring out how to maneuver on three legs. She’s never been very competent about covering things up – it’s not that she doesn’t try – she is very good about flinging litter around within the box and out of it… but none of it lands on the things she is TRYING to cover.  And the loss of one leg hasn’t improved her ability in that regard. We’ve had more than one evening where one or more of her paws exited the litterbox in a smelly, litter-encrusted state. That means I ended up chasing her around with wet paper towels and waterless bath to try and clean her paws before she got them onto anything important.  And a couple of times where I found out after the fact and had some cleaning to do.  Luckily I’ve got lots of little fleece blankets strategically placed in all her favorite sleeping spots around the house – she loves them and thinks they are for her, and she commandeers them wherever I leave one unguarded.  Since she was tired and groggy from the meds she would almost always beeline right back to a sleeping spot after getting up to use the litterbox, and settle down to either sleep or pull the mess off her paws.  This means most of my cleaning other than her paws themselves  has consisted of whisking away the dirty blanket, shaking it off into the trash, throwing it into the wash (sometimes with a little pre-cleaning), and replacing it with a clean one.

OK, I uploaded the videos from Sunday to Youtube and I have gotten the code to try and embed them here.  Let’s see if I can make it work properly.

Here is Misty playing with the little Kong I got for her – I thought it might encourage her to use her front left paw but she has found another way that works better for her.  She doesn’t see all that well so I think the advantage of having her face close to it is as helpful as not having to use her paw:

And here is a video of her hopping across the kitchen into the foyer to receive treats from me.  Without any prompting she rose up on her hind paws to reach it as I handed it to her:

Misty has been super cuddly and clingy the past couple days.  She has spent most of every night snuggled up against me in bed, and whenever, wherever I sit down she follows and sits as close as she can get – on my lap if possible.  This morning I woke up and found her like this, on my pillow with her face about two inches from mine.

I think she really likes how soft the pillow is compared to most other places she could sleep. The only other spot comparable to the pillow would probably be the couch. But that’s downstairs and she can’t keep tabs on the humans during the night from down there.  The bed is big enough that I was thinking maybe I should give her a pillow of her own.

From reading other people’s blogs, I see that it is pretty typical that sometimes cats who are in pain become standoffish and uncuddly, and that they usually return to being more cuddly and comfortable with close contact after the source of their pain is removed.  So I am wondering if Misty’s increased cuddliness is actually a return to what would have been normal for her all along.  Perhaps the leg had been bothering her for a longer time… and that might explain why she didn’t act like it was any big thing by the time I discovered it.

Misty’s done with her buprenorphine and she seems more energetic and sleeps less deeply than she did when she was on it. I took some videos of her hopping across the kitchen and then standing up on her hind legs to take treats out of my hand, and of her nudging her Kong around with her head. I posted them on Facebook but they’re on my android phone and I still cannot access this site from the phone.  It looks like they’d be too big to upload here anyway.

Her stitches look good but she wouldn’t stop trying to lock them yesterday so she got to wear her little shirt for the day. I’ve seen her scratch at them with her back paw a few times too, so she’s probably going to be wearing the shirt a lot until the stitches come out on Thursday.  She seemed kind of annoyed to have the shirt on, but she dealt with it.

Tonight will be Misty’s last dose of buprenorphine. I am not really sure she still needs it, but the instructions say “Give until gone.” I talked to the vet’s office yesterday – they called to see how she was doing. They said to keep giving it to her. She woke me up this morning meowing for her breakfast, which is something she hasn’t done since the surgery (that is one behavior I didn’t exactly miss). I called her to come sit with me, and she slept on the bed snuggled up with me for awhile before she got impatient and started bugging me for food again.  Just to clarify, she has dry food always available 24/7, but I give her canned food twice a day, and that is what she was asking for.  She gets very eager.

She is snuggled up against me on the couch right now – I’ve got the day off and I’m working on an art project and watching House on Netflix.

I tried to post this last night, but my PC was already shut down for r night, and I had misplaced my iPad (found it in the closet this morning).  So I tried to post it from my phone instead, and got an error message: Forbidden. For some reason I am apparently unable to access any Tripawds blog page via my android phone. Weird.

Anyway here is is what I wrote last night:

Misty is still doing great. I think she is feeling more comfortable every day. Yesterday she didn’t spend too long in my lap, I think she wasn’t sure how to lie comfortably.  But today I didn’t take any new photos of her because she spent about five hours curled up on my lap and I wasn’t close enough to the camera to grab it without disturbing her. 🙂

I’m so glad she has gone back to sleeping in my lap. That is something she only started doing after we moved to FL – she never was much of a lap cat in past years. I missed it since the surgery, until yesterday.

Misty is on my lap for the first time since surgery! <3

Below is the text of the biopsy report.  As I said in a comment, I don’t understand all the nitty gritty stuff yet, but I will be talking it over with my vet and the oncologist.  The upshot is, the amputation should be curative.  No chemo/radiation ordeal to dread.

It sounds like the tumor had gone into the bone of her leg worse than we saw initially on the Xrays, and it said they compress the muscle too – how in the world was my poor Misty not in pain?  I worry that maybe she was, and she was just hiding it or ignoring it.  I’ve seen her in pain in the past though – a few years ago her ears were really messed up due to food allergies, and at first we thought it was ear mite and were treating them accordingly.  They got more and more gunked up, we were giving her ear mite meds and cleaning her ears, and she hated it, and it wasn’t getting better.  When I moved a few years ago I switched vets, and it was the new vet who diagnosed it as food allergies, cleaned her ears up and got her on hypoallergenic food.  But when they were really bad I could tell it hurt because when I was petting her she would headbutt my hand or an object and accidentally bump her ears sometimes, and whenever that happened she would shy away and then go hide somewhere.  She hasn’t acted at all like there is any problem with her leg.  She even clawed the scratcher, stretched, kneaded her blankets, ran, jumped, played… etc.  Not even any sign it was impairing the movement of her muscles.

I think A1 was the tumor’s main body on the outside of her leg.  A2 was, I assume, the part that went into her bone.  And B is the lymph node.

Microscopic Description:

A1: Multilobular proliferation of mildly pleomorphic neoplastic spindle cells arranged in perivascular whorls and solid interwoven bundles are seen. Neoplastic spindle cells have mildly pleomorphic medium oval vesicular nuclei and a small amount of eosinophilic fibrillar cytoplasm. Neoplastic cells are associated with a variable amount of fine granular basophilic extracellular matrix and variably thick collagen bundles. Interwoven fascicles of disorganized neoplastic spindle cells with minimally pleomorphic elongate flattened nuclei are also seen. Mitotic count is approximately 3 per 10 high power fields. The minimally to mildly pleomorphic neoplastic spindle cells are associated with in rare band of densely packed mildly pleomorphic neoplastic spindle cells. Neoplastic spindle cells compress skeletal muscle and in one area extend into the interstitium of the skeletal muscle.

A2: Similar proliferation of mildly pleomorphic neoplastic spindle cells arranged in concentric perivascular whorls are seen. Neoplastic cells infiltrate skeletal muscle. Multiple mildly degenerate peripheral nerves are seen. Multifocal chronic inflammation is associated with neoplastic infiltration of the skeletal muscle adjacent to the peripheral nerves. Tiny multiple fragments of dark mineralized bone are present at one cut edge of the skeletal muscle.

B: Single peripheral lymph node is examined. Perinodal adipose tissue contains numerous small lymphocytes intermixed with scattered fewer but moderate numbers of plasma cells and small numbers of macrophages. Subcapsular sinus and the medullary sinus contains small numbers of hemosiderin laden macrophages. Diffuse mild edema is present.

Microscopic Interpretation: Peripheral nerve sheath tumor with atypical fibroblasts.  Mild drainage reaction, lymph node.

(Biopsy) Comments: Majority of the sample is consistent with peripheral nerve sheath tumor. Peripheral nerve sheath tumors are less common in the cat compared to the number of case diagnosed in dogs. Feline peripheral nerve sheath tumors (PNST) similar to canine PNST have moderate potential for recurrence at the sample site but low metastatic potential.

It can be difficult to distinguish reactive fibroblasts and hypertrophied endothelial cells from their malignant counterparts.

Re-examination of the sample site is recommended.

Here’s Misty’s new shirt.  It isn’t readable in the photo, but the back of the shirt says “You rescued my heart” and I think it is super cute. There were pink and red ones but not in size small. Not sure she would want pink anyway. She’s always been prettiest in purples and blues, I think.

She wasn’t terribly pleased with it, but I think that is because the arm was too narrow for her upper leg. I’ve taken it off and cut the arm wider for her, plus removed the tag at the back now that I know it fits. It was only $5 anyway. Good timing, too – she was scratching at the stitches a little bit with her back leg earlier. I think I will put it on her whenever she is up and around now. She still sleeps like a rock, so I don’t worry about her messing with it when she is sleeping.

She WAS a rescue, by the way. I got her from the local animal shelter when she was ~8 weeks old, and she has been a treasure ever since.  The reason written on her cage that the former owner gave her up was that they were moving.  I am not sure how you decide to give up a pet that you’ve taken responsibility for because you are moving… makes no sense to me.  Anyway – their loss, my gain. And Misty’s too – I am sure someone who would put her in the pound, whatever their reason, can’t possibly have appreciated her the way she deserves.  I have been SO lucky to have her. She is often called the “perfect kitty” by my family because she is so perfect and good.  She came with manners, I didn’t teach them to her.  She says “please” so very sweetly when she is asking you for something, and “thank you” if you give whatever it is to her, or when you let her in or out the door.  She is quiet at night (usually) and when she jumps up on the bed she lands so precisely that you don’t hear anything or feel the bed move – she just materializes. Sometimes she does that to my lap too.  It can be very surprising to suddenly have a cat appear in your lap.  She must have lived inside before we got her, and apparently in a place with very square furniture. When she was very young she had a hard time with our squarish kitchen table’s rounded corners.  She would hop up on it and then walk along the edge until she got to where the corner would’ve been if it wasn’t rounded… and then step right off the edge and fall.  She wasn’t *really* allowed on the kitchen table, but before she learned the rules she had a habit of hopping up on it when she was excited to get closer to us humans, she would jump up and walk toward me, looking at me and usually “talking” as she came – not watching where she was putting her feet at all.  I probably saw her do this a good dozen times before she got wise. She had never seen stairs before we let her out into the hallway, or at least I don’t think she had because when she saw them she acted like she was exploring an alien planet.  She loves to perch up high and look down on things – another sign that she always lived inside before we got her, I suspect.  In my old apartment her favorite place to sleep was on top of the refrigerator, she would look down upon us and everything in the apartment like a little queen surveying her kingdom.

She’s all medded for the night and sleeping comfortably and of course cutely here on the couch beside me.

Her meds, by the way, are .5 ml gabapentin twice a day, and .15 ml buprenorphine every 6-12 hours. When I brought her home she’d had both in the morning and they said she wasn’t showing much pain so they were doing every 12 hours with the buprenorphine. That evening she woke up and started puttering around just as her medicine was due so I gave them both to her exactly on the 12-hour mark. The next morning (Day 2) she seemed in more pain so even though we weren’t at 12 hours I gave her the buoprenorphine again.  Since then I’ve been giving it to her around every 8 hours, except today we are back to 12. She slept through the 8-hour mark and I figured if she is so comfortable she can sleep I should not disturb her to give her meds she might not need.

The gabapentin has to stay in the fridge, and I just dropper it right into a little dollop of canned cat food, which she gobbles up eagerly, and once she finishes it all I give her the rest of her canned food (about 1/6 of a can usually, twice a day). The buprenorphine is supposed to go under her tongue or in her cheek. I am not really sure how I am supposed to aim it so specifically. I think I am getting it in her cheek but who knows. She seems to feel better pretty rapidly after I administer it, so I guess it is working well enough. She still gets pretty annoyed when I give it to her. I make up for it with treats before and after.

I went to Petsmart and looked at animal clothes – thought they might fit her better than onesies. Nothing specifically for cats, but I found some things in the dog section.  I saved the receipt and the tags and hanger, if it doesn’t fit her when I try it on her I can bring it back. Photos to follow if she keeps it. There are a lot of really goofy pet clothes out here, poor beasts. I tried to keep Misty’s somewhat dignified.