Ear Cancer Cat

Our cat Somersby developed two kinds of cancer in his ears:

- a "soft-tissue sarcoma" in his right ear (i.e., a large ugly tumour)
- "squamous cell carcinoma in situ" in his left ear (and probably both ears)

The squamous cell carcinomas looked like a smattering of harmless small black marks, but were in fact the more dangerous of the two cancers, as they were more likely to metastasize and spread elsewhere.

Both ears were also sunburned. White cats who get a lot of sun are prone to the above types of cancer, but using sunblock on a cat is just about impossible: they lick it all off even if you can manage to get it on.

Both ears had to be surgically removed (on June 8, 2010). Somersby took a worryingly long time to recover, but after two or three weeks was back to normal. He never seemed to notice his ears were gone (his hearing was apparently unaffected). It wasn't too long before he began to look completely normal to us.

Filmed in June & July 2010, and over the following Christmas & New Year's. Somersby unfortunately died of unrelated causes in the summer of 2011 at the age of fifteen. He had a good life and was well-liked by all.

---geek stuff-------------------
Canon HV20/HV40 MiniDV camcorders
Canon DM50 (outside) & AT822 mics (inside)
Created in iMovie 11
Encoded using the x264Encoder codec by Takashi

source file: EarCancerCat_1920_HD1-1-1_6400bps.mov

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• motoronna
• cat
• cats
• surgery
• cancer
• tumor
• veterinarian
• stitches
• anaesthetic
• animal
• sunburn
• sunburnt
• earless

[shexcy]

My cat has ear cancer...i love her soo much...she'z goin to have her beautiful ears removed monday but i cnt seem to believe it...the fct is making me cry tooo much i cnt stop :'( my mum is in denial..she wants to find anova wy to save her without removing her ears but ther is no way...ryt?

[motoronna]

@shexcy Sorry to hear that. As far as I know there is no other way. Even with humans, the best way to stop cancer is to surgically remove the diseased tissue. I hope I made this clear, but Somersby was absolutely fine after he recovered from the surgery. If he noticed the ears missing, he sure didn't give us any clue. You can try to prevent the cancer by using sunblock, but we tried that on our other cat and it's impossible - she hates it and just licks it off. Good luck!

[kamezodo]

Hope he rest in peace :(

[motoronna]

@kamezodo Thanks - he was a great guy and had a good life.

[kamezodo]

@motoronna I had a cat lived with me around 8 years. He was healthy but in the end he left with no farewell. My family was looking for him for a long time, but now we all wish at least he died without pain. In my country people eat cats meat, which is sucks and so terrible.

[motoronna]

@kamezodo That's a shame. Somersby's mother just went missing last week, but she was sixteen and had health problems (diabetes and cancer). She seemed fine, but we think she probably had a heart attack or something and hid somewhere to die. I'm pretty sure nobody ate her!

[kamezodo]

@motoronna cat just go hides if they know they're out of time. How I wish to meet him again... When he gets old I prepared to bury him near my house but in the end he didn't let me :(

[MrGeorgeAwalker]

He was a great cat who loved sun bathing. Somersby will be missed.