The floppy ear

It’s been a while since I updated about Conan. After the electrochemotherapy on his eye, he has been doing really well! That was in November last year and his eye has been looking really good ever since. Nothing makes me happier than to see him feeling himself and being happy, even if he is a butthead sometimes, he’s still my shadow every day, we have our routine. Since he turned 14 last month, he’s been less interested in playing but that’s expected from an aging cat. When I get the cat toys out he’s the one probably thinking ‘poor kid no one plays with her, I’ll just humor her for a while’. And yeah maybe he was just humoring me for my sake, my parents even say the same thing, he’s the one playing with me! So I’m only a little upset we don’t play in the evening anymore. I’ll move on. Otherwise, he’s still happy doing his usual activities of following me around the house and backyard, ‘helping’ me while I work by sitting on my keyboard, and making me follow him to his food bowl. He even followed me and my mum all the way down the road when we went on a walk! We saw the alley where he hangs out with his friends on our street and let me tell you something, he acts like an embarrassed teenager if you try to go near him around his friends haha.

But nothing is easy. Unfortunately, his ear has been problematic.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the ear which they zapped in the electrochemo had a huge scab afterwards which eventually off. He had a chunk of ear gone, and it stayed slightly scabby ever since. We’re not sure if it had anything to do with slow healing from the electrochemo, or if it’s just that the cancer spread. I think it’s most likely the cancer had spread before it fully healed. Up until September this year, the ear was just slightly scabby, but by the end of the month the tip of the ear started ‘flopping’ and the scabbing became a lot worse, bothering him. At times, he would scratch the scab off and it would bleed everywhere. So we took him to get it checked at the Vet (just his usual vet doctor, not the vet hospital). The ear unfortunately had to be removed.

He had his ear removal done 3 days ago, and he’s slowly recovering. It was hard to see at first because no one wants to see their pet have to go through this, but after he is fully healed, at least that’s one less problem. Since his blood tests are all normal, he has a really good chance at living a good life and so there’s no reason to just let the cancer spread. He doesn’t have any major issues, and other than the skin cancer he acts completely normally. So this was the best thing for him, and he’s doing really well. He also had another small skin cancer lesion on his nose and it had to be removed. That was luckily a very small lesion.

He’s still recovering so no running down the road to the alleyway for now, his friends will have to wait. He’s been assisting me with light backyard duties and sleeping a lot. Plus he’s on a pain killer so he’s not in the mood to run around, but he’s definitely still in the mood to eat!

Unfortunately that is the reality of having a cat with white fur, there’s a high possibility of them getting skin cancers if they go in the sun. The skin cancers on Conan have been on his lower right eyelid, his nose, and his right ear, all places where he has white fur/skin. The other eye has a black lining, his other ear has mostly black fur/skin, so it’s lucky that he hasn’t had issues in those areas. It’s unlucky though that the cancer was bad on his lower eyelid but the silver lining is that the electrochemotherapy saved his eye from needing to be removed. Cats can live just fine without an ear (or an eye) but you do try your best to prevent it (at some cost). So I have every hope that he will live the rest of his life just fine. I am also really glad that Conan goes to a great vet! He did a fantastic job (as always) and I’m very grateful to him. They always tell me he’s been a good boy!