The vet finally called. He had good news and bad news. Bad news is the sores on Josie's head are pre-cancerous. Not what we wanted to hear. He had a big long garbledygook name for it, which I didn't even try to write down. I did catch the "squamous carcinoma" part of it though. Ugh. The good news is it's very unlikely to turn into full on cancer and spread to her organs, and it's kinda sorta treatable. He gave us three options for treatment:

1. Do nothing and just let her live with it. Not recommended since it could get bigger/worse, which could make it even more difficult to treat in the future.

2. Treat it for 30 days with Aldera, a prescription cream for human genital warts. Yup, genital warts. The idea is to dry up the scabby parts and get them to fall off so new healthy skin can grow back. I would get this medicine from a regular pharmacy, so I have to call around and see who will sell me the small quantity that I need and how much it will cost. The vet guesstimated it would be about $250.

3. Radiation. There is a veterinary oncologist in Portland who can zap the area with a radiation gun. The vet said she is very good, but also very expensive. One treatment would run us somewhere in the $750-1000 range. Ouch. And she might need more than one treatment. Double ouch. The biggest advantage to this method is it would be done in one day instead of 30.

I spoke with Mr Moo about it briefly. Needless to say, he thinks $1000 for one radiation treatment, which isn't even guaranteed to cure it, is insane, as do I. Assuming I can get the Aldera cream in the quantity we need, it looks like that is going to be the treatment of choice. This means conehead kitty is going to make another appearance. I haven't told Josie yet though. She's going to be thrilled.

EDIT: Walgreens sells the cream in 12 count single dose packets. This means, instead of having to buy way more than we need for $250 (a 10 pack of full sized tubes), we can get exactly what we need for about $60. WOOT! (see later entry)