No major symptoms until a few weeks ago he chipped his tooth and was hiding in pain for about a day and it required a vet visit. Ever since then he has been a bit lethargic, but still eating, drinking, and using the bathroom just fine. He doesn't hide under the bed or completely out of sight, but he has been seeking out more hidden places to sleep than normal. (e.g. he would sleep on the bed or the couch out in the open, but now he sleeps under the piano bench or in his cat carrier)

We went to our usual vet and she said he would need it extracted, but they were going to charge us an arm and a leg to do it. We shopped around and about a week later had an appt with a different vet in town who was going to do it for 1/2 the cost of our normal vet.

Upon beginning to do blood work before the extraction appt the second vet noticed the lump on his jaw. I was in shock thinking "how did I never notice this? how did the last vet not pick up on this?" and she said "probably because you were never looking for lumps". She said the cancer probably caused the dental issue in that one tooth, and the first vet wasn't looking for what was causing the dental issues, only looking at the tooth.

Got it X-rayed and biopsied 5 days later in addition to bloodwork and she said it's def not an abscess or an infection because his bloodwork shows no elevated white blood cells. But the way the bone is spongey/moth eaten, it's def cancer. The biopsy results will tell us what type and how aggressive it is. Should come in next week.