Text Update - My cat has an incredibly rare cancer

I have been quiet online for a while now, so I wanted to give an update. I was going to record this for a little update video, but I decided I am too sad so I am just posting this as a text post even though it is ridiculously long. One of my two kitties, Simon, was just diagnosed with an incredibly rare form of cancer. As you might be able to guess by the dumb shit name "Allie Meowy" that I decided to use for my channel, I literally love my cats more than anything, so this has been difficult for me.

The actual channel update is:

I postponed my next main channel video, and I started to work on a video about an old cat game instead. I didn't feel like writing about anything other than cats this month so my schedule got messed up a bit! I feel bad about it, but these last few weeks have been horrible so I hope people understand. The cat one I started is fairly short, and then the next main video will be about an hour long.

The rest of this is about my cat:

Almost no one has ever had a cat with this situation before, so I think it's worth writing about a bit. Some of the details are kind of gross, so sorry.

Shortly after I posted the cult websites video, my cat Simon presented with a very weird symptom. He was leaking watery, reddish fluid from his abdomen. It was seeping through the skin on his belly. It was a LOT, like, after sitting in one spot for a few minutes, he would completely soak through towels. He was otherwise completely fine! He is literally the best cat ever (besides Henry who is my other cat and is equally also the best cat ever), and was just being an attention whore and acting normal like he normally is. Simon and Henry are both only 8, so end of life diseases weren't really something I had been expecting any time soon, and he seemed happy so I wasn't that worried yet. I couldn't find anything online about what the hell this symptom could be caused by though, which was weird.

I took him to the vet, who immediately said "I don't know what that is." That was when it got scary! His blood work was completely normal, which was abnormal for such a weird symptom. They also shaved his whole belly, and my poor kitty had dark bruises covering the entire lower half of his body. The vet felt a mass on his abdomen, so they referred me to an oncologist, since someone who specializes in cancer should know something.

I took him to this oncologist that was an hour away from me. But the oncologist had ALSO never seen symptoms like this before! Her guess was either cancer.... or completely curable inflammation that he would be able to recover from. I had been assuming cancer and was sort of pre-grieving up to this point, but then hearing that it might NOT be cancer and that he could end up being totally fine made the last month completely emotionally exhausting. She did caution me at this point that she was worried that it could be a blood vessel cancer, but that she had never seen a cat get that before and that it would be very rare.

Simon ended up getting a million tests at the specialist, and still, they found nothing indicating any normal form of cancer. They were leaning towards it being inflammation at this point, maybe a splinter or something got stuck in his belly that caused the mass and other symptoms, so they recommended surgery. The only way to test for the rare blood vessel cancer would be to completely remove the mass for a biopsy. So, he was either going to completely recover from surgery and be fine afterwards, or get a cancer diagnosis. It was basically 50/50 that after surgery either he would be completely fine, or that he would die soon.

Several weeks had passed at this point, and he was still acting normal. He actually loved going to the vet so much and seeing everyone there, and they told me that he had a little fan club with all of the staff working there because everyone loved him so much. I started to take him outside on little walks with me, and I ended up accidentally training to him come and jump on my shoulders when I would give him his medicine mixed in with treats. If I say, "OK Simon" in the right voice, he runs over and jumps somewhere so that he can climb up on my shoulders. I ended up having a really nice month with him. Cancer was so unlikely that I was mentally preparing for him to just recover and be fine, so I was pretty optimistic about surgery and had them go through with doing it.

After surgery, they were way more worried about cancer. I kind of blanked out when I got the call from the surgeon, but basically he looked like a mess inside and they had to remove almost all of his belly fat. I tried not to think about that call too much and I was still hoping it would be inflammation, so I tried to distract myself while I waited a week for the biopsy to come back and confirm it. That was the longest week of my life!

While I was waiting, all I did was watch sad movies. It did weirdly make me feel better. I started out with Midsommar. And then I watched Hereditary. Both of these movies are largely about grief, but like, grief for an actual person (not just a cat), so I think that's why it made my situation feel better. Anyway, then I watched Grave of the Fireflies. Then the next night I watched Schindler's List. The next night I watched Dear Zachary, which is probably the saddest documentary of all time. And then I got bored of all these sad movies by this point, so I started watching Game of Thrones from the beginning. That was the saddest of everything. I never finished watching Game of Thrones when it came out initially because it started getting bad, but the beginning is so good. That's why it's so tragic that it became so stupid. Game of Thrones was exciting because it felt like anyone could die at any moment no matter who they were, but then at a certain point it's like the quality of the show died instead in sort of a meta twist for the audience. Anyway, Game of Thrones definitely made me more sad than Schindler's List.

I felt like I was being silly. The chances of him having an incredibly rare form of cancer that most vets will never see were so low compared to just inflammation.

It was while I was watching Game of Thrones, just after the show became shitty, that I got the call. They confirmed that my cat Simon does have hemangiosarcoma, a rare blood vessel cancer. There's barely any reported cases of it in cats, especially in a way that has presented like it has for Simon. The most recent study that my vet found of cats that actually presented similarly to him had only 8 cats. The biggest one that I found had just over 50 cats, but that included situations that were quite a bit different to his.

Anyway, I just got that call last week. That horrible leaking problem sort of went away and came back a couple times over the last month, but it was the worst around the time I got the call. It was horrible. There were about two or three days where fluid was pouring out of him, like, I think I did five loads of laundry in one day that were only towels. He had his last vet appointment after that, and now I just need to keep him happy until nothing makes him happy anymore. He's only now starting to slow down a bit for the first time, so I have no idea how much longer he will have left. The vet estimated a couple months, but I don't know.

The pictures at the top of this post are the last ones I took of him before he got sick. He was begging for a burrito that I had and I took a bunch of pictures while he was making these cute dumb faces. Now that I'm not in limbo anymore I finally feel a bit better, so I'm excited to start posting dumb stuff again soon.

My call to action at the end of this post is that you should adopt a cat! We are coming up on kitten season right now. You should get two kittens!

Thank you everyone 🐱