Mouse

This is Mouse, our 10-and-a-half year old chocolate mitted ragdoll. She was diagnosed with a sarcoma that developed at the site of her rabies vaccination. We don't know how long she has left, but so far she's been doing pretty well.

(Canon 20D, cropped and scaled with The GIMP)

UPDATE: Well, it's almost 4 months since the initial post, and now just over 2 months since we went through with the surgery to amputate her cancerous right rear leg. It was disarticulated at the hip and she hasn't had any trouble... well if you don't count the 'bed sore' on her OTHER side. That still has about a 0.5 cm x 0.5 cm piece of scab + matted fur that is tenaciously hanging on.

Mouse gets around in fine tripod fashion: front left, front right, hop. Her back left leg is now--more or less--her back center leg, but it works better than it sounds.

The cancer was stage 3, so there is still work for the folks at the VCA Referral Clinic: every 6 months we need to take her in for a chest x-ray to see if anything has spread to her lungs. Thus far her incision line is clean, and that is very good news. At the rate her tumor was growing it would be positively ginormous by now. Similarly, there have been no signs of breathing difficulties.

After a heart-to-heart with her, My Lovely Wife announced that there was an agreement in principle for 10 more years. Let's hope.