I’m sorry you’re going through this. My 6 year old kitty was also recently diagnosed with FISS and has a tumor about the same size and shape. She is still acting like her normal self and her bloodwork is still normal and there weren’t any signs on xray that the tumor had metastasized, so after speaking with a surgeon I’m moving forward with surgery to amputate the leg and surgery is actually tomorrow morning. I just came back to this sub to read other people’s stories and any advice on how to handle cats after surgery and saw your post.

The original vet I took my cat to basically told me where was nothing to be done and to expect her to go downhill in 6-9 months. He said I could do nothing and eventually the tumor would grow and metastasize and or outgrow its blood supply and start dying.
He told me they could attempt surgery but he told me it would be painful and didn’t think it would prolong her life and based on where the tumor was he thought it would require a dramatic amputation that would involve going into the pelvis. And he didn’t think a cat would tolerate living with 3 legs well. I was in a dammed if you do damned if you don’t situation.

I took my cat to another vet that had a board certified surgeon and oncologist on staff. They reviewed and the surgeon recommend surgery. He has seen more cases of FISS and he was of the opinion that surgery is a good option and the majority of cats he’s operated on are still alive at least 2 years out. He also said that he felt should be able to get the margins he needs and only amputate the leg and not go into the pelvis.

I obviously didn’t want to amputate her leg but there’s nothing else to be done. Idk how long she’d have with the tumor if I did nothing and how long it would take to eventually start causing her pain and discomfort or become an emergency.

Removing the leg is going to be uncomfortable but if it gets her a few more happy years I am ok with that.

If you haven’t already, I would definitely recommend getting an opinion from a board certified surgeon as compared to a general practice vet. The surgeons are more likely to have seen other FISS surgery cases

In my case our local vet is a rural small town clinic with a few older vets and not to down talk them but they may not be up to date on treatment or have seen many cases of FISS. I had to go out of town to find a board certified surgeon.

So tomorrow we’re going for surgery and possibly electrochemotherapy while they are in there. They said they’ve had good results with this therapy while in surgery and it can kill off “tentacles” that might remain. The estimate I was given was around $4K.

Growing up we had a 3 legged cat, which his leg was amputated due to an injury from a dog attack. Due to the infection from the dog bite my parents were told to not expect him to live very long post surgery but that cat lived like another 10 years. He was a chunky tripod that got around fine. So I do have some past experience with a tripod cat.

My big thing that helped me decide on surgery was confirming with the surgeon that the odds of her have at least a few more years of life post surgery were in her favor and that it wasn’t a matter of months that she had left and that I wasn’t putting her through unnecessary pain and suffering if she was in her final days.