CW: Cancer

I adopted my kitty when she was 1 years old. She was already spayed, so I never really worried about mammary cancer.

Yesterday, I happened to feel two firm masses in her primordial pouch near her nipple. I took her to the vet first thing this morning, and after shaving her belly, they found several masses of varying sizes along her right mammary gland. The biggest ones were the ones I felt yesterday. The vet expressed to me that they are very concerned given the location and amount of masses. They said that they could do a biopsy (to which we would have to wait for results from the lab), but expressed that she would rather remove the masses entirely and then test them.

My kitty isn’t even 4 years old yet.

She’s still playing, eating, and acting completely normal. She’s never liked having her belly touched, even when she was younger, so I never really checked thoroughly for anything like this. She was last seen by the vet in January for a physical exam where I watched the vet thoroughly check her abdomen, so these likely developed sometime between then and now, and I feel horrible for not catching them sooner.

There are so many that I’m scared. Really scared.

She’s been with me through everything, especially when I moved across the country on my own to start a new job. I am so scared of losing her.

The surgery department is sending me a quote soon and my vet recommended an ultrasound for her liver and an X-ray for her lungs to check if the masses have metastasized. I asked them to include a quote for removing all of her mammary glands to give her the best chance. I’m already in debt and will probably have to take on more, which I’m okay with, but it still hurts to feel like I was finally getting things under control financially this year, just to end up in more.

I’m going to do everything I can for her. I’m sorry for rambling.

All I can really say is this: even if your kitty is young and spayed, please take the time to check along their mammary glands for any masses while petting them. I think that if I had done that at least once a month or even biweekly I would’ve caught all of this sooner.