You’d better not be taking me to Montana

This morning Simone had her first trip to the vet since moving to Seattle. Actually, it was her first trip in several years, as she’s been blessedly problem-free for almost all the time we’ve had her. But now that she’s around ten years old, and also because we needed to establish a relationship with a new veterinary office here, we decided to take her in for a checkup. Besides, a few months ago an odd, bare, wrinkled flap of skin appeared on the back of her left hind leg; it looks like a deflated blister. It didn't seem to bother her at all, and we were trying to get ready to move, so we just decided to keep an eye on it and find a vet in Seattle when we were able to get around to it.

Eastlake Veterinary Hospital is, as the name suggests, near the eastern shore of Lake Union, about a mile away from our apartment. We loaded Simone into her carrier, which she hadn’t been in since our big trip up from San Francisco. She was not happy about this at all. I had to reassure her repeatedly that we weren’t going to move her two states away again.

It was mostly a routine checkup — the weigh-in, the temperature-taking, the rabies and upper respiratory infection booster shots, the dental exam. She’s an acceptable 12 pounds 4 ounces; the vet said that ten pounds would be better, but her current weight’s not bad. Being a ten-year-old cat, she’s got some tartar on her back teeth and she’s due for a cleaning, but fortunately there was no obvious evidence of serious dental problems. The vet, a tall, slim middle-aged woman, found that the most convenient way to examine the growth on Simone’s hind leg was to pick her up like a baby, which was very cute. Simone submitted to this meekly for the most part, and only after a while did she reach out and tap the vet on the chest with her front paw, as if to say, “Excuse me, but if you’re finished, would you mind putting me down now?”

The vet wasn’t sure what the growth was — possibly a cyst. They took a needle biopsy at the clinic, and gave us the option to have the growth removed and a more thorough tissue biopsy done at the same time as Simone’s dental cleaning. We’ll probably end up doing that next month. For now, we’re expecting the needle biopsy results around Thursday.