Saying goodbye to Big George

My best fuzzy friend, Big George, lost his five month long battle with lymphoma on Friday. He was strong till the last couple of days, and was a loving pet till the end.

George was always around while I made my vlogs and short videos, and would sit by my side and talk to me while editing. I joked that he was my producer. This is a short tribute to him.


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Big George

From time to time you may have seen me mention my cat, Big George, here on the blog. George, who's about 11 or 12 years old, is mostly Maine Coone, and a great cat. But today I have some bad news about George. He'd been having bad diarrhea for several nights (and not in his litter box), so we took him in to the vet yesterday.

In checking him out, the doctor felt a lump in George's abdomen and so he took a couple of x-rays that showed a "mass" pushing against his small intestine causing both problems (loose stool and loss of control).

Today we went back for an ultra-sound and needle aspiration. We're still waiting another day for the official lab results, but we're now pretty certain that it's some sort of lymphoma or lympho-carcinoma.

Untreated, this type of cancer in cats moves very quickly, and he could be gone within a month. With treatment, depending on how aggressive, he could have six months to a year. There's no surgery available for this, and the drugs and kitty-chemo cannot cure it, but they can make him comfortable to enjoy at least a few more good months.

Our next appointment is with the oncology specialist at a different vet office (just like for humans, moving from the GP to getting a referral for the specialist). That will be Monday afternoon, after we have the results from all of this morning's tests.

And now I realize that I should have taken the idea of pet health insurance far more seriously than I previously had.