Sudden death of my kitty Oliver

Question
Hello,
I just lost my 5-year-old orange tabby Oliver last Thursday 5-24 and I'm having a very hard time with it.  I need to know if there was anything I could have done to prevent this from happening. He was acting just like himself the night before and that morning...eating, drinking, using the litter box, sleeping with me and purring.  Thursday afternoon, I all of a sudden heard him "yelling", a very loud continuous yell, and I found him underneath a bathroom sink in an empty cabinet. He looked scared and had a yellow liquid around his mouth.  I picked him up and he was limp and then all of a sudden threw his head back and stiffened his legs and then relaxed.  I thought he was having a seizure. I ran for my husband and we rushed him to the vet (10 minutes) where they took him right back to start working on him.  Within just a few minutes the vet came to us and said he wasn't going to make it and that she felt a mass in his abdomen.  (How did I not notice that??) I wanted to know how the mass could cause all of this to happen so quickly when he was fine earlier. She said it must have just reached that point. She said he was very jaundiced (his ears and gums) which in the rush I did not notice but he was't like that in the morning..I would have noticed that.  How does that happen so quickly?  She also thought that when he threw his head back earlier that he might have had a stroke. I sat with him and petted and loved him until he quit breathing.  I couldn't believe this was happening and I still can't.  If you can, can you tell me more of the medical process that may have taken place. I took him to the vet back in December because he was vomiting frequently and the vet said it was probably stress because we had a new puppy.  She said she didn't feel anything in his abdomen at that time. He continued to vomit periodically until this happend, but I just thought it was because of the puppy like she said.  Now I feel i should have taken him back again for another look and maybe the tumor would have been found earlier when something could have been done about it. I feel horrible and I miss him so much.  I'm hoping if you can explain this a little better, I'll be able to handle it better. Thank you so much.
Robbi

Answer
Hi Robbi,

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Reading your description, this really doesn't sound like a stroke to me, and it definitely sounds like he was having seizures. The screaming, the tensing up, throwing his head back, and looking afraid, those are all classic seizure signs. Cats with severe liver failure will have seizures due to high amounts of waste products that have built up in the blood.

Jaundice tends to build up slowly over days, but it's extremely difficult to see this in an orange cat. The color of their fur disguises it. I don't think anyone would notice it unless they were a professional or they were especially searching for it. And only a vet will be able to feel a mass in the abdomen. I would imagine your kitty's mass was in his liver. Cats don't often get tumors on the outside of tissues that are palpable as tumors. They get cancer that infiltrates organs and makes the organs feel irregular. But you or I wouldn't be able to feel this. Only those who have been trained to know what a normal liver feels like will be able to determine what an abnormal liver with a mass feels like.

There was nothing you could have done for your poor little guy. Cancer is considered incurable in cats. When caught early, sometimes cats can receive chemotherapy or radiation treatment, but these are not typically curative and only buy the kitty months if the cat responds well. It's a lot to put a cat through. And because cats hide their illnesses so well, most owners never find out their cats have cancer until they're in critical condition. I have been in your position many times. Please know that you could not have known that this was going on.

I wish you the best.

Jessica