My 18 year old cat has cancer. Several months ago he went through an operation
to remove a cancerous growth on his abdomen. While we were hopeful that we had
"gotten it all," 2 weeks ago we noticed another growth in the same area and so
booked him for another operation.

The operation happened last Saturday. Since he's come home (it's been a week
now), he's had absolutely no interest in food whatsoever. I brought him back to
the vet on Monday, 2 days after the operation, when I became frightened by his
loss of appeitite. The vet gave him fluids, antibiotic and a pain shot and
asked me to bring him back on Tuesday, when she did more or less the same
thing. She's done blood workups and urine tests numerous times. It always comes
back with the same normal results.

In the meantime, I tried all the old standbys to stimuate my cat's appetite
(human food that he likes, heating up his food, tunafish, etc.) and finally
managed to get my cat to lick baby food off of my finger. He won't lick it off
a plate, just off my finger. I noticed that he makes a horrible grinding noise
when he tries to chew a glob of baby food, and thought that there might be some
sort of dental problem that might be the cause of his appetite loss. I brought
him back to the vet today (Saturday) where he got more fluids, more antibiotics
and a teeth cleaning that indicated that no teeth were loose. And of course, he
still doesn't want to eat.

So far this has cost roughly $1300, and I still have no idea why my cat isn't
eating. Neither does my vet, who doesn't seem terribly concerned that it's been
a week since my cat had a meal. This didn't happen after his first operation,
and since my cat has been a real chow-hound all his life, I'm very worried
about his total disinterest in eating.

Any thoughts on what might be going on or what I should do next?