Another ‘Narnian’: A Brave Feline Girl Named Lucy

It is a tad easier to care for five cats than for six. But only a tad. Once you have five, that sixth one is only minimally more work : one more bowl at feeding time twice a day; a bit more “stuff “(to put it nicely) to clean out of the litter boxes. But on the up side — and it’s a major up side — it means one more fascinating feline personality added to the mix (each cat is distinct in character, habits, likes, dislikes).  And, above all, it means a “forever home” for one of the unthinkably large number of hapless, homeless cats who are literally thrown away by unthinking, uncaring human beings, human beings whom God intended to care for the animals he created, not  to treat them like so much refuse.

Lucy was one such cat. In spades! About two-and-a-half months ago she was brought by the people she lived with to our local SPCA along with two  feline housemates (cats she was said not to get along with). We, in turn, brought her home on the evening of Feb. 29.

Lucy is estimated to be 10 years old. That age, though not terribly old for a cat, is a huge strike against any cat awaiting adoption. But worse: she is diabetic. We thought, at first, that perhaps her former owner(s) simply couldn’t afford to treat her diabetes. Insulin is expensive: $100+ for a 10 ml vial (though that can last for many weeks, even months). And then there are the test strips for a home glucometer (also pricey), and the lancets, and the glucometer itself  – if, that is, one is of a mind to do home-testing, which is the best way to keep tabs on the disease and, along with an all-meat diet, the best way (the only way, really) to move toward correcting the disease and quite possibly getting the cat off insulin all together. But then we found out that Lucy was actually diagnosed by the shelter vet. Her previous owners didn’t even know she was diabetic, apparently. So why they gave her away will remain an unanswered question.

I first saw her picture on the SPCA website. There, she was mistakenly listed as a 10-year-old male — bearing the name Kiki Bear.  (I’m not one for infantilizing or “cutifying” cats. I shudder at a creature as dignified, independent and intelligent as a cat like Lucy — or any cat — being given such a name. )  With my husband’s blessing I paid a visit to the shelter a few days after looking at the website. There, I found out that the cat in question was female and that she had diabetes. And she  would, they said, need to be given insulin for the rest of her life. But she was a nice cat, they assured me; she purred fairly readily and wasn’t at all aggressive.

It wasn’t love at first sight.  I was much more attracted to several kittens, 3-4-month-old gray tabbies who cried out for attention. Lucy was dozy and inactive even when outside her cage. I  presumed that had to do with her blood sugar levels, not her age. Her coat was dull and felt filmy, almost grimy.  She showed no particular interest in me. She appeared to stare into space.  But my heart went out to her. Further, I became alarmed when I learned that, despite her diagnosis, she had not been put on a low-carb diet by the shelter vet. She was still eating the same high-carb dry food that she had  eaten all her life and that beyond doubt had caused her diabetes in the first place.

Back at home I began to research feline diabetes. Quickly I discovered the “tight regulation” protocol developed by the California cat-only vet Elizabeth Hotchkins. The protocol made perfect sense to me, and the first move — one we already had planned if we were going to adopt Lucy — was to get a cat off dry food and never let even a morsel touch its lips again. Ever. The alternative would be meat: canned food without any grains, potatoes, corn starch or other starches, meaning carbs. (Hotchkins provided information on how to determine what percentage of carbohydrates a can of food contains by reading its label and making a few easy calculations.)

The other part of the protocol would be to use a protamine zinc insulin (there is now such a cat-only insulin) and to home-test the cat’s blood sugar several times a day.  I knew — felt sure — I could do that. Ed and I talked about it and together we drove to the shelter a couple of evenings later. We knew Lucy needed a home and needed to given a chance to beat the diabetes, and we felt we could give it to her. We signed the paperwork and took her home. There was no fee: the shelter clearly assumed that that would be even more of an impediment against anyone adopting such a cat; and they knew (more than we did then) how much treating her diabetes would cost.

Unlike  some previous  times when we bandied about this name and that name for a new cat, we knew immediately she was going to be LUCY. Her namesake is Lucy Pevensie, the little girl in C.S. Lewis’s  Narnia Chronicles  who discovers Narnia through the wardrobe in an upstairs room in her uncle’s  old house in the English countryside at the beginning of World War II. In the stories Lucy is a brave, straightforward girl who develops a particularly close and trusting relationship with the lion, Aslan (Christ figure in the stories). She is our third Narnian cat, though, sadly, she will never share our home with the other two, Caspian and Digory. (Caspian died on Jan. 3 this year; Digory, last year in May.)

As I’ve experienced many times when I did not at first embrace a situation or person (or cat!) wholeheartedly, God’s grace impinged on the scene in unexpected ways. We soon discovered that Lucy is indeed a “nice cat.” She’s far more. She’s goodnatured and patient (considering what she has to put up with twice a day regarding having her particularly sensitive ears pricked for the drop of blood to do the glucose test).  And she’s unexpectedly playful. And she and the five other cats have learned to get along very well very quickly.

On her new diet, and getting the right amount of insulin when needed, her coat began to get glossy in literally a few days; her eyes are bright, and she clearly feels better and energetic. She shows it by running through the house playing ball virtually every day. (She bats a foam ball, runs after it, repeats; then eventually she carries it to me, wherever I happen to be in the house, all the while emitting her excited, croaky attempt at a meow.)

For the last few days Lucy has been under the weather; she skipped some meals (very abnormally, as at first she was a ravenous eater) and is much less active.  We’ve been concerned, and watching her carefully. Earlier this afternoon, however, she resumed eating a small mea, so we hope she’s on the mend. In three weeks we’ve already come to  care very much for our new and brave feline girl.    

The Strange Case of the Crotchety Cat

Roo is a good-natured, talkative cat. She’s a happy cat. She expresses her happiness partly by letting you know her opinions. And she lets you know when she wants something. She “talks” forcefully and purrs forcefully. Unfortunately for her, we can’t always exactly interpret her language. That’s especially been the case in the last week-and-a-half. And we’ve regretted that we couldn’t entirely understand what she was trying to communicate.

We knew something was wrong. We knew because she was mostly NOT talking. And when she did talk she whined. She also stopped jumping up on the bed, onto her kitchen stool, onto my desk and onto everything else she normally jumped up on. She got morose. In fact, she became pretty darn crotchety. She didn’t stop eating (a sure sign of sickness of some kind), but , wow, was she in a bad mood! I gently examined her and discovered she would wince — and sometimes cry out — when I put any pressure on her hindquarters. I called our vet. The next day we saw Doctor #2 at the vet’s office.

Well, Roo did have some sign of infection in her bladder, though not seriously so. Nevertheless, she was put on a course of antibiotics for a week (and I gave her LDN too — low dose naltrexone, which helps regulate the immune system). She seemed somewhat better. But she was still out of sorts. And still not jumping UP — only down, once I had placed her on the bed or her stool. She was acting anti-social — and was at least as crochety as the week before. She would hide under the kitchen island, under the bed, or sleep in the out-of-the-way hallway near the back door.

This morning I brought her back to the vet. This time we saw our own doctor. Roo was clearly in pain, and — as I had noticed myself — she had been over-grooming that hindquarter area where her pain was located, no doubt trying to sooth herself. Upon testing her the vet saw that there was clearly no paralysis or other indications that she had a serious spinal problem. But, we concluded together, she must have gotten injured somehow when this all started. Possibly she landed wrong and/or wrenched muscles on jumping down from some perch. It’s not likely one of the other cats attacked her. Roo does tend to do her own thing and doesn’t  like Keeley or Eustace “in her face.” But she doesn’t see them, nor Doughal, nor Josie, as enemies; nor do they see her as such. Though cats are notoriously good at hiding pain, it was no longer any secret that she was in pain, and apparently seriously. A spinal x-ray wouldn’t show much, Dr. D. said. And blood work wasn’t warranted at this point.

With my approval, the vet gave her a slow-release steroid shot somewhat like cortisone. (There have been a few times when I’ve had such shots myself.) It would continue to release its effects for some 10 days, he said. Within two hours of returning home Roo was showing signs of being her old self. She began to talk to me quite insistently. Inexplicably (to me, anyway) she wanted to go outside (she’s not an outdoor cat). And that crotchety demeanor had already all but vanished. When I called her at lunchtime she ran into the kitchen to lick out my yogurt dish — one of her favorite things.

The exact cause of Roo’s pain is, and will remain, a mystery. But that her pain made her crochety is quite understandable. She’s obviously glad she’s already feeling better. And so are we.

The Transformation of Eustace, Feline ‘Dragon Boy’

After we lost Digory last spring, a friend of ours who fosters cats for Save-A-Pet knew that we might be able to take in a new cat. She called one day and broached the subject. She had recently taken in a eight or nine-month-old male tabby (another tabby! — this one more sworled than striped like Digory, Keeley and Doughal). A woman who had “rescued” him was now relinquishing him.

 

We did take him, and we named him Eustace for a character in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles (in “The Voyage of the Dawntreader”). Just how appropriate that name would turn out to be we could then little guess. He was our third “Narnian” cat, after Caspian (a Prince of a cat!) and Digory. As best as I (and our Save-A-Pet friend) could piece together the information, this woman had taken in Eustace, then a small kitten, when he was wandering near her apartment. Whether he had been born outside and lost his mother and littermates, or whether someone had dumped him, we’ll never know.

 

The woman already had a Siamese male-female pair (sexually in tact) and a large former-stray tomcat. She likely was not allowed to have more than one cat in the apartment, if any.  Presumably partly because the Siamese cats were not spayed or neutered and she wanted them to breed, she kept Eustace in her  bathroom. Based on his look and behavior after he came to us I’ve concluded three things that the woman wouldn’t admit to: 1. that Eustace was confined to that tiny bathroom most of  time;  2. that if/when he was out, the tomcat, as the dominant cat in the household, chased and probably mauled him, making him very fearful; 3. that he was not being fed enough (he was very thin when he came to us).

 

The consequences were dire for his development as a psychically normal cat. That is: he did not develop into a normal, affectionate, playful and confident cat.  Quite the contrary. First, he didn’t get the opportunity to learn all the things his mother would normally have taught him along with his littermates. Then, he didn’t get the opportunity to play with his littermates or other cats. He didn’t get to observe from them and his mother what is acceptable cat behavior. He just didn’t have the chance to learn to be a proper cat. And he didn’t learn to trustingly interact with people, either. What he did learn was fear: fear of that tomcat and perhaps of the Siamese pair as well. And perhaps even fear of his apartment “savior.” And that fear turned into aggression.

 

Why was the name “Eustace” appropriate for him? In Lewis’s story, Eustace is a bratty, beastly boy who is nasty to everybody. Though he couldn’t possibly admit it, he’s a lonely child who doesn’t know how to be a friend or accept others as friends. When he’s at his beasliest he is turned into a literal dragon by Aslan (the lion/Christ figure) so that he will see himself as he really is. He takes the lesson to heart and when he is given the opportunity to become a boy once again, he is a vastly transformed young man.

 

Our Save-A-Pet friend was letting Eustace acclimatize in the cottage on their property where a handful of their foster cats live. He mostly stayed in his carrier at first but seemed to do ok.  She had him a week or so and didn’t see him show aggression. So what happened after he came to our house was as complete a surprise to her as it was to us. She and her husband brought Eustace to us and we settled him into our guest bedroom with his own litter box, bed and food/water bowls, as we always do with a new cat. We then initiated our introduce-a-new-cat routine. We had five other cats who would need to adjust to his presence, and he to theirs.

 

My first major and highly unpleasant surprise came very quickly. I went into the room, sat on the bed and talked softly to Eustace. He immediately came over and crawled into my lap.  I was thrilled. That, of course, was not the unpleasant surprise. He clearly craved attention in a way that indicated he hadn’t had much of it. I petted his head and began to gently run my hand down his back, as one normally might. Quick as lightning he whipped his head around and sunk his teeth into the fleshy part of my hand between my thumb and other fingers.  It was a deep puncture wound and bled profusely. Needless to say, it was painful. I was nonplussed.

 

That was the first of seven or eight times over the next weeks  that Eustace bit me hard enough to draw blood.  After the first time I immediately adjusted how, and how much, I touched him,  and I always looked for early signs of him becoming agitated. But those signs were just not there. His biting was a very sudden lashing out with no discernible warning.  There were so many things he wouldn’t tolerate, though he clearly craved contact. He would rub his head on one of my ankles, but then several times he bit me  on the ankle — hard — after doing so.

 

As bad as the biting was, worse and just as out-of-the-blue, was his first attack on Caspian. Caspian was the gentlest,  sweetest-tempered cat we’ve ever had, and truly the sweetest creature I’ve ever run across. When he was the dominant cat of the household but never pressed his dominance. He was a friend to all and the others all responded to him in like manner. When a new cat came in, he would welcome it, and the others followed his example. Not so Eustace!

 

Caspian was a big cat. The only thing I can figure out is that something about Caspian perhaps reminded Eustace of that tomcat who must have terrorized him in his first “home.” He seemed to  figure that striking the object of his terror before it could strike him would be the best policy. He jumped Caspian, claws out, teeth bared. The fur — Caspian’s fur — literally flew. I picked up several wads of it afterwards. It was Caspian’s turn to be terrified. When Roo saw Caspian being attacked she launched into Eustace herself, hissing and yowling like a little banchee.

 

In an instant all six felines launched an all-out screeching, clawing cat fight. It ended quickly, but the damage was done. From then on Caspian was afraid of Eustace, and the others, too, gave Eustace a very wide berth. As for Eustace, he tried to repeat the attack every chance he got. We immediately had a find a way to protect Caspian (and the others, but especially Caspian). We got out an old halter at first, then bought him a new one. We connected a couple of leashes to it and tied one end to a sturdy piece of furniture. I secured another length of double leash in another part of the house, in my home office where Eustace could look out windows and a patio door.

 

During the day, Eustace had to be either connected to one of the leads or in his room (the guest room) with three baby gates stacked on top of each other to fill the doorway, keeping him in but letting him look out and any other cat look in. Given his history we hated to confine him in any way, but there was no other choice.  At night, he stayed in the guest room with the door closed, which he didn’t mind, and which became a sanctuary for him.

 

Gradually, very gradually, he became a bit less volatile and a bit more trusting. But he still was extremely aggressive with Caspian, especially. We just couldn’t allow Eustace to roam the house freely unless Caspian was outside lounging on the deck (which he loved). Something else needed to be done. I had already begun to read whatever I could find on cat aggression and how to deal with it. (Though we had had cats for years it was a new problem for us.) It was clear to me that Eustace’s aggression was fear-based. But knowing that helped only a little. We needed some major behavior modification! And quickly. Weeks had already passed. Stressful weeks.

 

The situation got increasingly stressful — for poor gentle Caspian, first of all; and the other cats weren’t keen on being chased and nipped at either.  But I also felt the stress, and so did Ed. In fact, very early on, our Save-A-Pet friend suggested that we bring Eustace back to her. It was a wrenching decision. He certainly couldn’t be adopted to just anybody, if at all, in his viciously aggressive state. I was then at the end of my rope in terms of knowing how to deal with him.

 

We did bring him back.  For one night! There was something good about this cat, as volatile and nasty as he could be, that had very quickly gotten under my skin. I had already begun to care for him a great deal. I knew, I felt sure, that if we could unlock the key to getting him to trust, he would some day be a great cat. He was certainly smart; and he was beautiful. And, yes, he could be affectionate (though he had never learned how to purr, and still doesn’t purr except for a second or two involuntarily sometimes when I first say hello to him in the mornings). I talked with our friend once again about why I wanted to try again with Eustace, and I drove down the 20-some miles to her home to retrieve him. We were now well and truly committed. There was no turning back.

 

In my reading about dealing with cat aggression  I discovered the Bach flower essences. I shouldn’t really say “discovered.” I was already aware of the Bach “Rescue Remedy,” but I hadn’t been aware of how the 38  essences can be used singly and in combinations of up to five or six at a time to address a range of emotional issues in both people and animals. I ordered a book which outlined how to use the flower essences with cats. It was an eye-opener. (The flower essences are dilutions that work in a homeopathic manner; they were developed in the early 20th century by an English physician named Edward Bach.)

 

I consulted the book I had ordered and chose three essences for Eustace, based on the issues I felt needed addressing: vine (dominance and inflexibility), water violet (aloofness, fear) and holly (jealousy, hatred) . I began giving him the equivalent of  two drops of each in his food, morning and night.

 

Within a week I saw a marked difference in his behavior. He was calmer, he was gentler, he was more outgoing. It was the beginning of a remarkable transformation. In the meantime I also started giving Caspian the flower essences: mimulus (fear of known things), larch (lack of confidence) and walnut (protection from change and unwanted influences). Those, too, made a difference, though not quite as amazingly as those we gave to Eustace.

 

In November Ed and I went to Florida for a week. During that time we asked the wonderful cat-lover who comes in to feed and tend the cats to allow Eustace to be free in the house during the day while Caspian and Keeley were kept in the guest room, and to put Eustace back in the guest room at night while letting Caspian and Keeley out. What that did, among other things, was to get Eustace accustomed to the smells of Caspian (and Keeley) in “his” room and litter box, and vice versa for Caspian and Keeley.

 

The day after we returned, while I went out to do a couple of errands I put Eustace in the guest room with the baby gates up. While I was gone he managed to wheedle his way between two of the gates and jump down into the hallway and freedom. Here’s the breakthrough that astonished me:  when I returned, there was Eustace standing in the kitchen; and there was Caspian, standing in the kitchen. And a couple of the other cats came up too to say hello. There were no fireworks, there was no hissing, no aggression!

 

From then on, Eustace has run free in the house (except  for 5-10 minutes at meal times, which keeps him calm as I’m preparing their food, and which he doesn’t mind a bit; he stands quietly while I attach him to the lead, just as he stands quietly every morning while I put his halter on).

 

Sadly, during all those months, Caspian was increasingly suffering from kidney disease. (I surmised that one of the reasons Eustace showed aggression to him was also because he sensed that weakness in Caspian.)  Caspian died on January 3. (Boy, do we miss him!) But we’re very happy that in the last month and a half of his life he had nothing to fear from Eustace, and was no longer subjected to the stress of the previous four or five months.

 

Just as the boy Eustace in Narnia, our Eustace is no longer a Dragon Boy. In the mornings when I let him out of the room, I pick him up and hold him against my chest, scratching his forehead, between his ears and down his back while he nestles his head against me and closes his eyes in momentary ecstasy.

 

He has also learned , and is learning, how to play without mauling his feline housemates. Josie (who also came to us after Digory, not so long before Eustace arrived) is becoming his particular buddy, and feisty, fearless creature that she is, she knows just how to handle him.  He’s still getting his flower essences. But we believe that as time goes by, he will only get better and better.

It’s a whole new (feline) world at our house

When I came to finally update this blog a while ago I was shocked — genuinely shocked — to see how long it had been since I had written here: 10 months! That being the case, I doubt anybody is reading this. But I’ll update it anyway. And will try again, in 2012, to resolve to regularly write here.  I was shocked, too, to realize how much has happened in our cat family since I wrote that last post about Digory and his outside-the-litter-box problem.

 Digory

There’s no easy way to put this: we had to say a permanent good bye to Digory in May of last year, two months after that last post. In those two months he did start suffering physical problems to add to his emotional ones. His pancreatitis worsened and he developed some dementia  (and had already been developing it some time before, we think).  His life was no longer pleasant for the most part. To be honest, neither was ours — and it also affected the other cats. The combination of things, including becoming ever more touchy and ever more litter-box incontinent, took their toll.

In regards to the peeing, we  tried everything we could think of, including using Feliway (the collar, the diffuser, the spray). I wish, however, that we had known about the Bach flower essences. I discovered them only about four months ago, and they’ve worked wonders for Eustace, who we were asked to take in not long after Digory died.  (More of Eustace below.) The flower essences may or may not have worked for Digory. It’s easy to second-guess yourself. Because of the circumstances Digory’s death was one of the saddest we’ve had to confront in losing a cat. Though quite ill, he was physically terminally ill  at that point. We miss him still — most of all his nightly naps on my lap.  R.I.P., Digger Boy. (See the previous post re: Digory for a photo of him.)

In the mean time, last spring, we started noticing signs in Caspian of what looked to me like possible kidney disease. Unfortunately, blood tests showed I was right. He refused to eat the so-called feline kidney diet, which was all right with us. But we did ask our vet to put him on LDN (low-dose naltrexone) and that seemed to help. It certainly, helped for his arthritis/joint pain. He became noticeably more mobile.  He had a good summer, for which we were thankful. He loved going out and lying in the sun on our deck, with Keeley as his deck-buddy. And bumming bits of grilled meat from us when we would eat supper outside, which we did frequently.

 Eustace

Strangely and coincidentally, Eustace reminds me of Digory in various ways: he looks quite a bit like him (we didn’t actually pick Eustace out; he came to us via a friend who fosters cats for Save-A-Pet). He  is approximately the same size as Digory was, has a similar way of looking at you, and instead of slinking along in silent cat-like fashion he trots down the hall loudly (the cat equivalent of a galumph) like Digory often did. He also came to us with severe emotional problems: a fear-based aggression that he took out on Caspian, poor gentle Caspian. I suffered a literal handful of bleeding, puncture-wound bites from him in the first several months. I know the warning signs of a cat being agitated, but Eustace gave no warning signs. He had been locked up in a tiny apartment bathroom for the most of the first seven months of his life and didn’t learn by example to be a proper cat; nor did he learn to interact trustingly with people.

Eustace’s name (like Digory’s and Caspian’s) comes from the Narnia Chronicles. Eustace was a nasty boy who, because of his nastiness was turned into a dragon for a while. But he learns his lesson and reverts to being a boy, a much improved boy.  We wanted another Narnia name and we joked that Eustace (aka “Dragon Boy”) certainly suited him. The name stuck, though now, almost six months after he arrived, he’s no longer that Dragon Boy. He has come a long, long way and is on the road to being a very fine cat.

Josie

In the month after Digory’s death, and just a few weeks before Eustace came to us, we adopted a young female from the local SPCA. We very literally saved her life, as she was ill with a respiratory infection, had spaying surgery while ill (I tried to convince the shelter to wait), and then needed additional medical care and hand-feeding to nurse her back to health. We named her Josie. My mother’s name was Josie; I can’t say that we named her after my mother but I’ve always liked the name and it somehow fits this feisty, energetic little cat.  Rambunctious might be a better word. She even gives Eustace a run for his money. That’s a very good thing. She plays with him fearlessly, and he can still get rather rough. But she’s dauntless. Even Roo, our lovely little Prima Donna Roo, has accepted Josie. Good thing, since they’re the only “girls” in the group.

Caspian

This year, 2012, began very sadly. Yet again we were forced to confront a tearful good bye. It was Caspian this time. His kidney disease caught up with him. Throughout November and December we were giving him regular subcutaneous injections, and that would help a bit each time but it was clear his kidneys were now seriously failing. On January 3, as he  just turned 17 years old, and on the second day of his refusing to eat anything at all, we took him to the vet for the last time. He lies buried next to Digory (and then Dancer, Cassie and Hedwig) under our backyard apple tree. How we miss his sweet-tempered nature, those beautiful, soft liquid eyes and that  peculiar little squeak-meow, so kitten-like for such a large male cat.

 The New “Five Felines”

So now we’re back to “The Five Felines” — but a different five than when we first used that term so long ago. Then the five were Caspian, Digory, Dancer, Cassie and Keeley.  Keeley, who will be 9 in March, is the only one of the original five left. The current five are Keeley, Roo, Doughal, Josie and Eustace.  Very interestingly, Doughal, who has always been a bit shy, is showing more and more signs of  the kind of sweet-tempered personality Caspian had. (The picture of Caspian at left was taken last September 24th, my birthday.  It shows him as he mostly as he always was.)

When you love and adopt animals — especially when you have more than one or two — heartbreak is sure to follow at intervals. There’s no getting around that. Except in unusual, unnatural circumstances,  human beings far outlive cats and dogs. That’s the way God created us.  We must learn to handle it. Ed and I decided many, many years ago that we would, over the course of our life together, give homes to as many homeless cats as we reasonably could. For us, six at a time is our maximum.

We’ll see: once The  Five settle in to the new situation and shift status and relationships amongst themselves, as cats always do when they lose one of their companions, perhaps we’ll open the door to one more. We’ll see what spring — or summer — might bring.  For now, we’ll love and relish the antics of the New Five Felines.

The ongoing saga of the recalcitrant cat

Digory:  beautiful, affectionate lap cat; smart; inquisitive. Neurotic; jealous.

Digory, dozing (sort of)

A person hates to call  a cat  she’s known and loved for nearly 16 years neurotic and jealous. But there’s just no getting around it. Digory is jealous of even the smallest attention the other cats get (especially two other younger males, though excepting the male  Caspian, who is his age and his ultimate good buddy).

Digory is jealous of my time.  He hates it when I’m fully concentrating on my writing, practicing piano or some other task at hand. He’ll do all he can to distract me. Two favorite methods are pawing at the back patio door and snapping the wooden grille on it in hopes I’ll let him out, and going into the kitchen and scratching at the food can in hopes I’ll feed him. In both cases it’s not so much that he wants out or he’s hungry. He wants my full attention.

The jealousy of the other cats occasionally leads to spats, boxing matches, hissing, chasing down the main hallway. Those are pretty normal and usually not so serious in a household of five cats. Far worse is another result when the jealousy rears its ugly head: when Digory gets upset he pees outside the litter box. I don’t merely mean near the litter box.  I mean in other parts of the house:  in the bathroom (fortunately it has a tile floor), in the kitchen (planked laminate floor) and in the dining room (pegged hardwood). I’ve found a substance that works superbly at removing cat urine odors, but that’s somewhat beside the point.  (Should you need such a product it’s called, quite descriptively, Anti-Icky-Poo, and it works better than anything else I’ve tried; they have a sister product,  a stain remover, which also works very well).

We had our vet check out Digory. Digger has no physical problem that would be exacerbating his behavior. The behavior occurs when he’s stressed, but he gets stressed very, very easily.  My husband and I have long since begun to feel like prisoners in our own house. We’re afraid to go away overnight as Digory gets paranoid as soon as he sees a suitcase, and he pees in bad places when we’re gone; and occasionally leaves a single turd in the master bathroom. (We have an excellent woman who comes in and feeds and plays with the cats twice a day when we’re away, and he likes her; but she’s not us!)

I’ve tried to lessen Digory’s uptight moments. I never raise my voice at him; I give him  a great deal of attention; he gets first dibs on my lap . I even spent money on a session with what you might call a “cat whisperer.”  He’s one complicated little feline, she said. And he does carry the weight of his world on his little cat shoulders.

What else can we do?   We dearly love Digory (and all our cats). But he is not a human person. While we want him to be happy and comfortable we cannot allow him to control our household. Ed and I both have business trips away later this spring. I’m skeptical about how Digory will do when we’re gone. But I’m also hopeful. I’ll reassure him that we will return, and then we’ll wait and see.

Doughal, handsome Irish boy (II)

I’ve been negligent of this blog, to say the least. That, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that our houseful of cats never does anything interesting. They do,  and quite frequently.  What it does have to do with is finding time to recount my version of their lives. I often wonder whether other bloggers — real bloggers who write daily or near daily updates — have real jobs and real lives. How do they do it?

After we lost Hedwick we were back to having four cats. The house seemed almost empty house when one is used to six.  Ed and I talked about the situation and I began to check out the usual cat sources: the paper, Save A Pet, Feline Friends and the local ASPCA — that last one is the Rainbow Shelter, which got not entirely  stellar mentions in my book. But it has a new director and a new direction and I’m much encouraged about the positive changes there; they’re even working hard to make it a no-kill shelter.

Doughal Boy

My visit to the ASPCA turned into four visits.  Since we were left with just one female, the ever feisty and kittenish Roo, and three males (oldsters Caspian and Digory, and middle-ager Keeley — our first handsome Irish boy), I was looking for a new female. There were several that drew me very strongly, and I them — and on my second and third visit just as much so.

So Ed and I went there together a few days later to try to choose just one of them. But when we got there  it wasn’t those winsome females that first of all attracted Ed or warmed up to him. It was, instead, a male, a year-old (we were told). He was a striking gray tabby with bright eyes, a finely pointed nose , big ears and an insistent but fairly polite voice that said, “Please, PLEASE get me out of this cage!”

Ed did take him out and that cemented their bond. I was still not convinced but gradually came around. He was a friendly and beautiful cat and had been in that tiny cage for some weeks. The thought of it made me crazy. We took him home. After some consultation about a name we decided to go with another Irish one, in honor of Ed’s heritage, so Doughal (doo-gul) he became.

It turned out that, like Ed,  he has a limp (a stiff left back leg), but it sure doesn’t slow him down. He’s a playful, rambunctious fellow and immediately latched on to Keeley as his best buddy.  They frequently gallop — gallop is the  word — up and down the hallways together, chasing each other and tussling. In the evenings he jumps up onto my recliner and nestles into my right shoulder while Caspian and Digory are already settled in on my lap and along my legs.  And he purrs.

He had an ear tatoo and a microchip when we got him but the shelter told us he had been surrendered. We found out more at his first visit to our vet, one of whose employees also works at the shelter. Doughal’s previous owners had indeed given him up, but why we couldn’t imagine, him being the lovable creature he was.  It also turned out that he was  not one but three years old. We have an exact birthdate (it’s his birthday this month, so he’s now just a shade from four years old). And his name had been Bubba! We laughed at that one, and still call him that now and then as a joke. He’s definitely a Doughal. And we have no regrets that we adopted him, however unexpectedly.

Remembering Hedwig: Stalwart Trouper

I will not forget the day last summer when we drove out into the country, east down the road along the Niagara River. Our destination was the home of a Save-A-Pet foster family, Beverly and her husband. Since then Beverly  has become someone of whom I can ask advice or who I can get to confirm (or not) my hunches regarding wacky and weird cat behavior (weird to my husband and me, anyway).

On that August day, 2009, we set out to adopt a new cat. As I’ve written here previously, we had not so long earlier gone through the trauma of losing 14-year-old Cassie (in July, to hyperthyroidism) and 16 ½-year-old Dancer (seven weeks earlier, to kidney disease). The pain of that loss still reverberated, the more so Dancer’s loss, as she and I were particularly bonded for all those years. But life has to go and we were ready to provide a home for a new cat

Naturally, over the years, I’ve remember the particular days on which each of our cats arrived. But that day last summer stands out because the cat we took home that day so clearly, emphatically adopted us – and specifically me – rather than the other way around.

She was then at least two years old. Beverly  had named her “Emma.” We eventually settled on “Hedwig” for her because, somewhat like Dancer, she had huge owl-like eyes and a dusky gray coat that brought to mind Harry Potter’s owl. (I know, Harry’s Hedwig was white; but it was her eyes that stood out: huge, wondering, owl-like.) Hedwig’s eyes were also somber, however, and there were hints about her that before being rescued she had had a difficult life. She was timid, and for some time after we adopted her she would cower at the slightest sign of what she thought might be danger or impending pain, as if she were expecting to be hit or kicked. It was distressing, an initially frequent reminder of the sad life she had led at the “pleasure” of someone who was sadistically nasty.

‘I’ve found you at last!’

As my husband, Ed, and I sat in the lovely large-windowed room where we met the cats Beverly had available for adoption, we watched a couple of playful three-month-old kittens play together. And then, in came their mother, “Emma.” She stood for just a moment near the doorway surveying us newcomers. She looked at Ed, then at me. Then she headed toward me at a fast trot; she sat at my feet and rubbed her head on my leg; she purred loudly as I reached down to pet her; and she stayed there – all of which said, “I’ve found you at last! You’re mine!”

Beverly was taken aback, but pleasantly so. “She’s never done that with anyone else,” she said. “She’s rather reserved.” And she told us as much of the cat’s story as she knew.

We had intended to get a younger cat, if not a half-grown kitten. But how could we say no to that display of unexpectedly confident affection? So we took her home.

The other cats adjusted quite easily to her, as they usually did to new cats. (We have a routine we go through which involves gradually introducing the newcomer.) We knew it would take time, perhaps a long time, for Hedwig to grow in trust and confidence, but ever so gradually she did.

It was three or four months after she came home with us that as I was petting her one day when I felt a lump on her back along her spine and one rib. Having lost both of our first two cats, the mother and daughter duo Marple and Delta, to cancer that began as a lump, I was apprehensive. As soon as we could we had our vet check Hedwig and the news was not good. It was an osteosarcoma: bone cancer, and the lump was in a spot that would make it very difficult to remove without damaging her spine (and removing the rib). A specialist would be needed and the cost would be several thousand dollars, but without any prognosis for real healing.

We decided we would do whatever we could for Hedwig in whatever time she had left. We asked our vet to prescribe LDN (low-dose naltrexone) for her, which Digory was taking successfully for pancreatitis, which I was taking successfully for Crohn’s disease (and other auto-immune problems) and which Ed was taking successfully for post-polio syndrome.

How can one drug help all those disparate conditions? It works like this: taken at bedtime, during sleep it sets up a two- or three-hour blockade of the cells’ opioid receptors. When the blockade wears off, the body – human or animal – responds by producing a flood of endorphins which are crucial to proper immune system functioning, and which begin to normalize a messed up immune system. Endorphins exist in low numbers in a person (or animal) with any condition that causes or results in immune system deficiency or malfunction. And all those conditions I mentioned (and many others) qualify. Our vet was happy to comply with our request for the LDN prescription. (It needs to be acquired from a compounding pharmacy and of course at a proper small dose for a 10-pound cat.)

Inevitable signs of decline

All through the rest of fall, through winter and through spring Hedwig did well. For a long time the tumor seemed to be growing only very slowly, if at all. But as the weeks of summer wound down the tumor began to noticably grow and Hedwig gradually began to lose weight. One day she stopped eating and we thought the end had arrived. I called the vet to discuss humanely putting her out of what we assumed was her misery. But it was a false alarm. Like the little trouper she was, Hedwig bounced back with a heartier appetite the day after and did not act particularly miserable. We surely didn’t want to end her life prematurely. Still, cats expertly mask pain. It is notoriously hard to tell when or if they are suffering (not eating during a terminal illness is often a sure sign). We knew her pretty well by then. We concluded that there was life left in her, and we were right.

We also knew that the day would come – perhaps in the not distant future – when we  would have to say good bye. That day came on September 17. We gathered Hedwig into the same fleece-blanket lined basket which had carried both Dancer and Cassie on their last car rides. As Ed drove the 20-minute trip to the vet’s office I held the basket on my lap, petting Hedwig all the while. She was not a cat who liked to be held, but she loved to be petted. Her continuous purring inadvertently brought tears to my eyes; I would miss her, cautious but affectionate cat that she was, who had chosen me as the human being to whom she would give her trust.

Once there, it took but a few minutes for a vet tech to take her to the back to insert a catheter into one of her front legs; the catheter would accommodate the lethal needle. The tech brought her back to us, setting the basket on the examining table. She told us, “Take as much time as you need with her.” Hedwig looked settled comfortably into her fleece blanket in the basket. She was purring even before Ed and I each began to pet her and talk to her for the last time.

When we were ready we called the vet in. I could continue to pet Hedwig as he inserted the needle into the catheter. Hedwig kept purring, relaxed, unafraid to be in this office again where soon after we adopted her she had spent uncomfortable moments with an impacted bowel.

Hedwig purred and purred, eyes half closed. As the vet slowly pushed the syringe’s plunger the deadly drug took over; and Hedwig simply stopped purring. It was as quiet and tranquil a death as we had witnessed with any of the cats we had lost.

The vet pulled part of the blanket up over Hedwig and offered to carry the basket to our van. We would be burying her under our back yard apple tree next to Dancer and Cassie. But I took the basket myself and set it in the back of the van.

At home, I set the basket on the kitchen floor. Digory, Caspian, Keeley, Roo and Doughal immediately milled around, each in turn, and in his or her way, observing and sniffing their erstwhile housemate. When they had all walked away for the last time I gently laid Hedwig in the large paper bag in which she would be buried and, with Ed, carried it out to the grave I had earlier dug under our apple tree. When we had re-covered the grave we topped it with some of the stones I had unearthed as I had dug. I cleared away some already fallen leaves from Dancer’s and Cassie’s graves and the surrounding area. A few days later I would buy decorative mulch for all three graves and a shade-loving plant for Hedwig’s.

All that done, I recall expelling a heavy sigh. We knew her but little more than a year, She was “only” a cat. Yet in her way she had an outsized impact on us.

 

A quiet winter’s afternoon

It is late afternoon and snowing softly. The large, light flakes are falling almost vertically, with just the slightest list to larboard, to use the old nautical term. At my right elbow Caspian is lying on a towel on top of my laser printer underneath one of three double-hung windows.  He is performing his toilette, now licking his front paws studiously, now stratching his left ear with left hind paw, now licking that hind paw.

Keeley is a foot away on a small towel-topped cabinet, under the second double-hung window. For a few moments he roused himelf out of his deep nap to also tend to grooming. Quick in all things, he finished before Caspian did and is now napping again, head down and, for once, facing away from the window.  Keeley lies under and next to these windows, one or the other, for hours at a time, watching the snow, or rain or peering into the night. But most especially he loves the birds and squirrels that frolic at the feeder not 10 feet from the window. Almost close enough to touch.

Earlier today when I looked up and out I saw a red-tailed hawk grounded in our neighbor’s yard barely 60 feet away. It was a self-imposed grounding. As I looked more carefully I realized the hawk was resting in the snow next to an alarmingly large pile of feathers. He was apparently digesting the feast he had just had. I was simultaneously glad and slightly disappointed that I hadn’t seen the hawk catch his meal. Not that I would have relished seeing another bird die at the end of that hawk’s talons, but there’s something awesome (in the real sense of the word) about seeing a wild creature like that in action.

Since then I’ve been thinking about getting on my boots, coat, earmuffs and gloves and walking over there to examine what’s left of the hawk’s meal. Our neighbors are in California, where they live all winter. They will be most interested to hear my tale about the hawk.  I’ll go over there shortly. I need to take a walk to get some exercise anyway. And when it comes to walks, I love above all things walking in quietly falling snow.

The colors out my window are all browns, grays and the junipers’ and spruces’ muted deep gray-green — all covered with that ever deepening blanket of white; pristine, pure.

Just inside the neighbors chain link fence, about 30 feet from where I sit in my home office, an American flag sways gently to larboard, then periodically relaxes again against its pole. Its deep red, dark blue and pristine white (nearly as clean as the snow) inject a striking brightness into the scene, albeit human-made. We don’t have a flag, nor the pole on which to raise it. But I appreciate my neighbors’ flag. And today I’m glad that the man of the house there ignores flag etiquette and lets it fly day and night, every day of the year. And puts up a new one whenever the old gets tattered.

Caspian and Keeley have both now turned to face the window.  And Roo has joined them, looking on the scene from atop my computer. I’m convinced they beauty when they see it.

Caspian, snow and flag

Keeley 1, Grim Reaper, 0

It wasn’t all that long after Digory had been diagnosed with pancreatitis. (He’s doing well, by the way, despite his absolute refusal to eat the special food he’s supposed to be on. So: exit special food. Enter: normal food — high quality normal food — and digestive enzymes. And an herbal preparation specifically formulated for that feline condition.)

One morning Keeley refused to eat. That had happened some six or eight weeks earlier, on a Sunday. We were worried (it can be,  and usually is, a sign of a serious matter when a cat refuses to eat), but by the next day he was fine. But this time he refused food the next day as well. We called our vet on the first day but our schedules didn’t allow us get him there until two days later. Keeley was on a quick and dangerous slide toward death, we realized by that second evening. I prayed for him; prayed that God wouldn’t let him die in the night; that we wouldn’t have to lose yet another cat, the third in a matter of seven months. God was merciful. Keeley didn’t move.  He lay in meatloaf position (on his belly, paws facing front, head down) for many hours at a time.

Digory — of all cats — then came to play nursemaid; Digory who is jealous of Keeley; Digory who seriously fights with Keeley and badgers him whenever he gets the chance. Digory got up onto the couch and lay down next to Keeley, fur touching fur. Digger stayed there for a very long time. I was touched. So was Ed.  But that also told us how serious the situation truly was. Cats know when one of them is not long for this world. We’ve seen it now a handful of times.

I thought that Keeley may have had a bowel obstruction. At the vet’s the next morning we found out he did have an obstruction, but of the urinary tract, not the bowel. Unable to urinate at all, he was being poisoned by his own body and the waste products he couldn’t rid himself of. He would stay for at least three days; we would have surgeryquickly to remove whatever grit and junk was plugging his urethra; he would be on IV fluids  all that time, and on a catheter for the first few days. It was a long three days. It took  many hours to flush his system of the poisons and to start to see our  old, goofy Keeley.

We came to visit on the second night. He was clearly happy to see us. He rubbed his head against our hands again and again and again. And purred. And purred. He was, by then, off the catheter, but wasn’t urinating very well on his own yet. By the next afternoon he was well enough to go home. He was a different cat. Never one to be overtly affectionate for more than seconds at a time, he now hung around and sought out being petted. He purred loudly under my hand strokes and rubbed his sides against my legs whenever he was near me. He did not just endure affection but relished it for many minutes at a time. Since then he’s gotten better and better. (And he, too, is taking a feline herbal prepartion that helps keep down inflammation, among other things.)

He once again is our good ol’ rambunctious goofball of a cat. Only now, he seems to be ever so grateful to be alive. And he seems to know we had something to do with that.

Digory decides to explore the world

Good Ol’ Diggerboy! I’ve been a bit worried about him, of course, since his diagnosis of pancreatitis. But he’s doing well, and it’s certainly not fazing him. He’s living his fine cat life and doing all the normal things he has always done — and then some.

The other night when Ed came home from work and the garage door opened as he drove his car in, unbeknownst to us, Digory slipped out. The inner door from the garage to the kitchen hallway was open a crack and I hadn’t realized it. He pushed past that and ran out into the glorious autumn sunshine. I had already given the cats their dinner, so didn’t think it odd that Digger wasn’t around while we ate supper, as the other cats were. I figured he was off doing his thing in another part of the house.

I then left for my symphony chorus rehearsal for the evening and Ed settled in to read in the living room. When I returned after our shortened rehearsal at about 9:30, Caspian, Keeley, Roo and Hedwick greeted me at the door. No Digory. I called him but got no response. That was strange. He normally would have been looking for a snack by that time, and happy to see me — for myself or for the snack? (Probably both.)

I searched the house. No Digory.

It had gotten cold by that time, around freezing. I put on some winter gear, took a flashlight and set out on my bike into the neighborhood. I steered with one hand and shone the light into each yard I passed. I called, but not too loudly. It was by now past 10 p.m. and I didn’t want to be disturbing the neighbors.

No Digory. I came back in to get warm and to report to Ed (he has a bad leg due to post-polio syndrome so was unable to help in the search). I went out again, going in the other direction. No Digory. I walked through our back yard, looked in the shrubbery, and did the same in the yard of our next-door  neighbors who spend the winter in California.

I returned to the house, quite worried now. He is not entirely well and being out in the cold all night, especially when he’s not used to it, could cause a crisis. I began to chide myself for being judgmental of all the people who advertise lost cats in our local papers, and for assuming they were not caring for them properly. One major thing in Digory’s favor: he was wearing a collar with a name tag and our phone numbers on it (as all our cats do, despite being indoor cats), should someone have found him in the morning. A lot of people don’t bother with that, assuming their cats will never inadvertently get out.

I’m a firm believer in God’s control over, and care and compassion for, all things he has made. I began to pray (as Ed was praying simultaneously), “God, you made Digory and all this world’s marvelous creatures. You know where he is; we don’t. I believe you care for him as one of your creatures. You gave him to us many years ago to love and care for. Now please send him home.”

I then walked back outside and called Digory once more. My call was immediately greeted with a loud, eager and somewhat distressed meow. I couldn’t exactly tell where it came from. I called again. The meow came again, from near the neigbhor’s house across the road. And then came Digory, running to our side of the road, “talking” all the while. He had by then been out some 5 1/2 hours.  I scooped him up into my arms; he purred loudly.

Once inside, the other cats gathered round and he apparently told them his story. He stuck very close the rest of the night, snuggling into my lap once I sat down in my recliner, and purring, purring. He has shown no interest in the garage door since then.

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