Dropped her off this AM.
1) The frostbit tip of her ear came off.
2) Her surgery wounds are somewhat infected, so got cleaned and more antibiotics
3) It looks like the mammary tumors weren’t all cleaned out, and are roaring back with a vengeance
4) And as visible in previous photos, she’s got a big belly.
As for #4, there are two possibilities the vet suggests: “Megacolon,” which is just what it sounds like; she’s just full’o’crap. A result of malnutrition, will go away in time.
The other possibility goes along with her wobbliness. She was found to *not* have an inner ear infection, so the wobblies would seem to be neurological. One diagnosis that couples the big belly with the wobblies is feline infectious periontitis. Let me quote Wiki: Feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) is a usually fatal, incurable disease that affects cats.
Umm.
This would of course be a very, very bad diagnosis; the only response is to make the remaining time – which is short – as comfortable as possible. But it’s transmissible from cat to cat; so Marvin would need to be physically, and permanently, separated from the others. Realistically, if Marvin has FIP, there is but one course of action: euthenasia.
The difficulty is that there’s no cheap or even definitive test for FIP; stuff like PCR DNA tests and the like. So right now she’s still at the vet to get more X-rays, hopefully to differentiate the big belly…. it’s either fluid or poop. Poop would be good. Fluid would be bad.
Couple this with the resurgence of the tumors… I’ve got an uncomfortableness.
