Jason is a long-haired black and white cat I saw recently. He is nine now.

His owners brought him to see me because they thought he had ear mites, but when I had a look I could see the problem was not so simple.

When they first got Jason as a kitten from a farm both ears had been full of black wax caused by the ear mites. He had shaken his head and cried if you touched his ears.

A trip to the vets and the patient application of ear drops for several weeks had resolved the problem.

When Jason started to scratch his left ear a couple of months ago his owners presumed that he had ear mites again and bought some eardrops from a pet shop.

At first he seemed to improve although he still shook his head from time to time. They stopped worrying until the day last week when he shook his head and a large blood clot came out.

The first thing I noticed when I looked at him was that his other ear looked fine. A quick peep inside confirmed it was pink and healthy all the way to the ear drum.

His left ear was full of blood and wax but was too sore to look into with an instrument, so I arranged to examine it under an anaesthetic.

Once he was asleep I gently flushed out the ear canal with warm saline and took a look. Halfway down the ear canal there was a large lump attached to the wall of the ear canal which was obviously a tumour. I removed as much of it as I could and woke Jason up.

The report on the piece of the lump I had removed called it locally malignant. It would not spread to other parts of the body but I had to hope that we could remove enough of Jason's ear canal to get rid of the cancer.

The delay in treatment meant it was going to be touch and go. He is recovering well from the operation, but it is too soon to know if we were in time.

The problem with drops the owner bought from the pet shop is not whether they would work or not, although they frequently do not, but the delay in having a proper look in the ear.

Ear cancer is common in older cats and it is particularly suspicious when only one ear is affected.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.