Adventures in Veterinary Medicine

One of my cats, Mr. Smith, had to go to the vet and have some tumors removed.  It was a pretty involved surgery.  Three incisions to remove five tumors.

Being interested in, well, kinda everything, I asked the vet to save the tumors so I could look at them.

The two big ones from his chest were lyphomas, a benign fatty tumor.  The vet tech showed them to me, they were in a bag.  They were solid, whitish masses with traces of little red veins, floating in a blood-stained pinkish saline solution.

I will never look at shrimp cocktail in quite the same way again.

The three little tumors were really freaky.  Those were probably malignant mast cell tumors.  They look like big ol warts, and because they are usually malignant they have to cut away a substantial circumference of skin and flesh around it.  So these things are floating in a jar, big warty knob on top with a two-inch circle of skin around it and fleshy bits hanging below it.  They appear to be some kind of mysterious deep-sea creatures that can only survive 4000 feet underwater.

Creepy.

I was going to post pictures of Mr. Smith, with his crazy half-shaved body and sutures, but frankly it's a little unsettling.  I expected nice clean little stitches, but I'm here to tell you, he looks like FrankenKitty.  They didn't stitch him up, they CROCHETED him back together.

Although as my friend Drew pointed out, now he looks like a badass - "If you think I look bad, you should see the other cat!"

Bless his little kitty-cat heart.