Mojo - One year Angelversary

Dearest Mojo,

It's hard to believe that it's been a whole year since I saw your sweet face. Or got to snuggle with you on the couch. Or was bossed around by your 'pack-a-day' voice :) I hope you are having the best time at the bridge, playing with all the others, and living life to the fullest. We think about you daily and feel so blessed to have known you those 4 short years. Your legacy lives on though...I saw Dr Murphy the other day and she told me she's used your photos in her lectures to help other vets. I am so proud of you Mojo, and how you handled everything life through at you with grace and a determination to make the best of the situation. You were a special boy for sure. See you again one day.

Mojo hanging out in his favorite chair. He looks so pretty against the red!

I wanted to take this time to show folks the progression of his tumor. Fibrosarcoma is unfortunately too widespread in cats, and I believe that knowledge is power. Stop reading here if you don't want to see...none of the pictures are gory though. Here's Mojo in August after his biopsy. He's back home and already playing. He had many tests done to figure out the type of tumor and the stage of the cancer. It was about the size of a marble at this time. The oncologists came back with the recommendation of surgery to remove the tumor and then 21 days of radiation to try and kill off any remaining cancer cells. This sounds fine and dandy, until we learned that in order to achieve 'clear' margins the surgeons want to remove his arm and some ribs. We were not willing to put him through something so radical and felt it was better for him to just enjoy the time he had left. The only guarantee they could give us was that the tumor would come back. Sorry, but no thanks.

So we did the next best thing, and threw a party! Here's Mojo waiting on the gift table for more guests to arrive! His hair has grown back around the biopsy site and he's feeling great. We are blessed to have some of the best friends and Mojo supporters around. He touched many lives.

This picture was taken in October. The tumor area is shaved and you can just make out the radiation lines. We decided to do one round of paliative radiation to try and provide some relief. Mojo seemed to be in a bit of pain, and we tried this option to see how the tumor would respond, and how Mojo would handle it. He did great until a few weeks later when we ended up with some radiation side effects. Nothing too terrible, but confirmed our decision to stop all treatments and just continue with pain management at home.

Picture taken in December. Mojo is very sleepy in this picture, and you can see how the tumor has grown. He was still jumping and playing some, but not eating as much as we would have liked. The tumor 'ate' a lot of his calories and he was getting pretty thin. He was already a skinny cat, without a lot of room for loss.

February, we had started on steroids and saw immediate improvement for a few weeks. The weather was nice, so we took him outside some. You can see how thin he's getting and how large the tumor is. It has a few sores on it, but we were lucky that it did not rupture or ooze.

His last day with us, hanging out in his heated bed. We were upping the pain meds too frequently now and still didn't feel we had a good handle on the pain. He was having to labor a bit more to breathe, and the morning of this photo, his front arm had gone lame. We had already scheduled with our good friend and vet to come over this morning and end his suffering. We were able to be there with him, and it was all extremely peaceful. We were able to let him die with dignity, by doing this one last act of kindness for him.

We took him to the vet school and let them have the tumor for research. I hope they can learn from his suffering so another cat will be spared.
Missing you today and always Mojo...Fly High Superman!