Cat's Treatment Inspires Owner to Help CSU Center

Monday, April 26, 2010

Contact for Reporters:
The Coloradoan
Pat Ferrier
patferrier@coloradoan.com

28-pound 'Ratty' doing well after Animal Cancer Center procedure

She calls him a rat, but he looks like a lion. He patrols the property and keeps the peace - a gentle giant worthy of poetry.

Mr. Cyrano L. Cat II is the elder statesman on Sandy Lerner's southern estate; a 28-pound long-hair orange tabby making medical history in Northern Colorado.

The 10-year-old Cyrano, whom Lerner calls Ratty, is recovering from stereotactic radiosurgery, or SRS, a highly specialized treatment for osteosarcoma performed only at CSU's Animal Cancer Center in Fort Collins.

Ratty is believed to be one of the first cats in the country to undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatment for bone cancer, diagnosed March 9.

Call it denial or determination, Lerner rejected conventional treatment: amputation or euthanasia.

"It was always, 'Off with his leg. Off with his leg,' " Lerner said in a telephone interview from her 800-acre farm in Upperville, Va.

The co-founder of Cisco Systems called several universities and veterinarians looking for alternative treatments.

"I spent three days, day and night on the phone trying to find a vet," Lerner said.

At 28 pounds, Ratty's quality of life was bleak with only three legs. With no treatment, his quality of life was zero.

“Every place I called said I had to cut the leg off. I kept saying ‘That is not going to happen,’ ” she said.

An orthopedic surgeon living down the road from Lerner told her the best animal oncologist in the country was Dr. Steve Withrow, director of Colorado State University’s Animal Cancer Center.

Some described Withrow as a “real cowboy,” who would try things no other vet would, she said. “They said if I wanted to beat my head against the wall and be a nut, I was on my own.”

Lerner and Ratty arrived at CSU on March 11, where he had a whole-body CT scan, which showed the cancer had not spread from the leg, making him a potential candidate for SRS radiotherapy, a treatment used frequently on dogs but never on a cat.

After a week at CSU, three treatments and a dose of chemo, Ratty was back home lounging in his 42-room estate where he “keeps the other kittens from squabbling, acts as the peace maker, takes care of the house and takes care of me,” said Lerner, a longtime animal rights activist.

He continues to have chemo treatments that leave him “a little bit draggy” for a couple of hours, then he bounces back. Overall, his prognosis is excellent, said Dr. Christine Hardy, director of operations at the Animal Cancer Center.

When asked if Withrow was hesitant to try a procedure never before done on a cat, Hardy said: “Part of being a comprehensive cancer center is sometimes taking the knowledge we have and using good data to come up with options for all the patients who come to us,” she said.

Withrow, who wrote the book on small-animal clinical oncology and started oncology as a subspecialty of veterinary medicine, “really is a pioneer in veterinary medicine,” Hardy said. “Because of that when you have an owner who comes to us and says the standard of care is amputation or euthanasia and that’s not OK, we help them make informed decisions and look at all the possibilities,” Hardy said.

“If someone is willing to try something new and push the envelope with good evidence behind it, Withrow is well know to be the guy … if you want to go for it, he’s the guy you go and see.”

Showing her gratitude
Lerner said she will be forever grateful to Withrow who pushed the envelope to save her “fur child.”

Now, Lerner appears willing to put some of her considerable financial resources into ensuring other cats and their owners have the same opportunities.

Lerner, who owns a certified humane, organic farm with 800 head of cattle, 400 pigs, a couple thousand chickens, 3,000 turkeys and a peek-a-poo mix named Tater, has asked her people to put together a plan to boost the center’s profile.

“It’s a big secret that the community really needs to know about,” she said. “None of the vets I talked with knew about any of this … it was just ‘off with his leg, off with his leg.’ It was mindboggling.”

“I’m trying to get them steered in some way that will really publicize what they’ve achieved,” Lerner said. “Why is that something they shouldn’t shout from the rooftops?”

Lerner’s public relations specialist, Kathy Savesky, will be at CSU in mid-May to discuss ways Lerner can help, including possibly helping to fund or raise money for clinical trials for new treatments for animals with cancer, Hardy said.

Fighting for equality
National statistics show fewer cats than dogs are treated for cancer, a statistic Lerner finds as distasteful as sexism or racism.

“Our pets are our children … and for years, cats have been more popular than dogs. Most of my friends have cats, and I have never heard them say they would spend (less) on a cat any more than they would say ‘I’m not going to send my daughter to college, it’s not worth it, but I will spend the money to send my son.’ ”

Lerner is certainly walking the talk. Ratty’s treatment so far has cost about $13,000 —$6,700 at CSU, about $3,000 for an initial diagnosis in Virginia and another $3,500 for ongoing treatments. She wants cat owners to know there are options for felines with cancer other than amputation and euthanasia, and to advocate for those options with their veterinarians.

Hardy said only about 15 percent of the cases the center sees are cats most probably because “Colorado is such a dog-centric state” with lots of wide-open spaces great for dogs.

“The story would be much different in New York City where lots of people have cats because they live in smaller dwellings,” she said.

Hardy also said there are multiple options for pets with cancer that cost less than Ratty’s groundbreaking treatment.

“I don’t want people to get the impression they can only have cancer treatments if they’re loaded,” she said. “We work with every owner … we do our best to offer enough options that money doesn’t have to be the deciding factor.”

Birthdays and bad poetry
Ratty is coming up on his 11th birthday on Memorial Day, and Lerner has plans to celebrate.

When Ratty returned home from Fort Collins, Lerner invited about a dozen neighbors and included a poem in the invitation.

The poem was so bad, the neighbors wrote other bad poems about Ratty, which are now in his scrapbook, Lerner said.

“This was a huge thing … when you’re looking at a big kitty going, it is a very big thing. Ratty is extremely grateful. He’s a big, happy boy now.

“This all started because of that little kitty that I said was a rat … and then it grew.”

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