He’s friendly and chill. He likes people and will let anyone pet him. Like a dog, in many ways.
Of course he likes sitting in boxes, and bags. Every cat seems to like this, and for us it’s endlessly entertaining. Put a box on the floor, wait a couple minutes, and he’s sitting in it. Just looking at you like “ha, look what I did!”
Sometimes he watches basketball or other random stuff on the TV screen.
He is very good at relaxing. This is him on my lap.
But the time to say “hi” might be running out.
Recently he suddenly fell quite ill, and after a few days of what seemed like improvement, the awful symptoms returned.
There is no treatment for feline oral squamous cell carcinoma (FOSCC) that does not also take out his entire tongue and probably destroy the will to live. The tumors are very aggressive and painful, making eating, swallowing, and cleaning himself extremely difficult.
He’s only 4 years old, barely an adult, and suddenly we are facing the end.
We weren’t ready for this. But who is?
So all of us are now looking at Simba through a different lens, where our time with him is limited and priceless. I hope somehow he can come out the other side healthy, but either way, treating our time with him as limited and priceless is the right thing to do.
We got him in January 2020, right before the insanity started, and he helped us get through it by being entertaining and playful, and sometimes getting into a bit of trouble.
All we really have is today, right now, because the past is gone and the future is just an idea. And so for right now I want to let everyone know that he’s been a great cat, and we’ve enjoyed having him around.
Update: the pathology came back today (Thursday March 28th) and instead of FOSCC it’s an equally aggressive cancer called hemangiosarcoma, a cancer of the blood vessels. He has drastically slowed down eating and drinking over the last two days, so unless that suddenly changes, I think the end is near.