Stray Cat Rescue Part 5 ~ Vaccinations & Panic Stations.

The tummy troubles went on and and on with intermittent bouts of diarrhoea and regular morning wake up alarm calls to the sound of duvet dousing chunky vomiting. Some mornings the bedroom would sound and look like a stag do had just checked out, but the vet had said it would take some time to settle, that they are extremely sensitive to change, but were utterly non-forthcoming with any solid advice, so I foraged in every corner of every forum in every country on the World Wide Web for any scrap of information. Everything still pointed towards being pregnant.

Cat morning sickness or Stag Do?

I introduced new foods very slowly. Tried regular set feeding times. Regulated portion control. Read every label for possible allergens. I confess, there was one cheese on toast incident, I know they are lactose intolerant, I know it was wrong, I’m entirely to blame and I hate myself for it. In herself she was fit and fabulous, but the litter tray tells no lies. 

I know it’s wrong, but I fell for the eyes.

Then, one unforgettable, harrowing morning I gave her her breakfast and it just poured out of the other end as fast as it went in. Not gonna lie, I had a mini breakdown, put on whatever clothes were at hand, shoved her in the pet carrier and George Michael raced us down to the vets. I even sped past an antique carved wooden chair in a skip without a second thought of stopping.

I was unsure about this particular vets practice as I had given a neighbour a lift there with her cat and gone in with her. He seemed very non-committal, disengaged, and didn’t really want to touch the cat. I found it a bit odd that he asked her to pick up the cat to put it on the scales which were in front of him. I’d asked other friends for vet recommendations and I’d already rang several for their details and to get a vibe, but this was an emergency and I just flew down there. 

I was distraught but still holding it together. I was worried sick she was seriously ill and also freaking out that she was chipped. As he examined her I could feel my top lip creeping up under my powder dry gums. Our game was up. Our time had come. I could now feel my throat closing as he put the chip reader to the back of her neck like a loaded gun to the head.

His hands-off approach suddenly seemed very fortuitous. He asked me to hold her while he scanned. I was jelly-legged but ready to run. I had her in a Half Nelson with my right arm, leaving my left free to sucker punch the him in the face and fling open doors if we had to put the FASE (Fugitives Across Southern Europe) plan into action. I’d pre-plotted a route as I knew some good people who’d hide us out if needs be. 

Turns out she’s not chipped and not pregnant. I relaxed my vice grip and looked down at her in my arms as she gazed up at me in clingy fear. Elation flooded my body that we never have to never go home again, but I was a little bit sad that there weren’t going to be any baby Begonias. I’d agreed to let a friend have one, but I was keeping the rest. 

As the muscles in my throat relaxed and my jaw unlocked itself I asked “What’s wrong with her then?” He said he didn’t know, he said he didn’t know a lot and to be honest I had already guessed that, but prescribed Royal Canin Gastro Intestinal wet food and a probiotic paste in a massive plastic syringe designed and prescribed by someone who had never met a cat before, to be administered directly into the mouth along with a flea and round worm capsule and a mother of a tapeworm tablet. Fun times.

Excellent food and very effective.

They only had half a box of food in the back at the vets, you can’t buy it off the shelf, so promised to order it in and asked me to comeback to pick it up. We went home. I wish I could say I relaxed but I was beside myself with stress and concern. Her tiny little furry body and great big heart were in trouble and I didn’t know what to do - neither did the vet. I fed her straight away with a potion of the Royal Canin food, staggered giving her the two dewormers, the syringe was broken and the tapeworm pill was secretly and silently vomited up in the suitcase I’d made into the kitten nest. Oh the dramatic irony.

Empty nest.

She was really ill. The vet was really useless. I was really unraveling. 

Utterly desperate and distraught I just wanted to grab somebody by the lapels and scream “What’s wrong with her?” “Do something!” “Say something other than I dunno!” I’d reached a point when I’d wobbled-out and when I stabilised I found myself sitting on a busy park bench staring at an intermittent jet fountain in a focelot (faux ocelot) coat, black Chinese trousers that flared out at the bottom which was a good six inches from the top of the socks I was wearing with brown shoes. I don’t know how long I sat there but the Earth had turned and so had my mind. I walked home in embroidered flappiness and a restored sense of normality. Thank you trees. 

Panic on a park bench.

A week later we went back to the vets. I told him the food was good, but you didn’t order any more and the syringe was broken so he replaced it but they still hadn’t ordered the gastro food and he was hell bent on vaccinating her. I asked for assurance that he didn’t think she was still too ill to vaccinate and he looked at me like I was a lunatic antivaxer and gave me an unnecessary speech on the benefits of vaccinating your cat. Christ. I don’t know how he managed to vaccinate her without touching her again but he did and within 24 hours I thought she was going to die. 

Vaccination bad reaction.

She could barely move, crawled not walked, croaked not meowed. She started salivating so excessively it was running down her chest. After eating a teaspoon size potion of Royal Canin Sensitive (all I could get instead of the Gastro Intestinal) food she’d growl and scream in pain under the sofa. When she came out from under the sofa she’d crawl into her new Cat Head Bed and not come out. Her poop was liquid. She’d just lie next to me in bed in constant pain reaching out a paw to touch me for help. Her radiating beam of life and love had gone out. It went on for two weeks. I went fucking demented. 

Please get better.

Rang the vet, turned up at the vet, rattled the closed vet doors, stared through vet windows - nothing, just got that thing that everyone does now, that thing where you withdraw from any sense of professional, emotional and reasonable responsibility. That thing like when you go to the doctors and say could you check this lump for me please and they look over their glasses at you and ask in a mildly threatening tone: “and what makes you think you’ve got cancer?” And you want to punch them in the face for being facile and you don’t know if you’ve got cancer, you want them to tell you if you’ve got cancer and holding it in actually gives you cancer.  

When the four week second vaccination was due a lovely friend came and stayed over at mine to help me get her in the carrier in the morning, which, even in a near death state she found the reserves to resist. As we were loaded and leaving the house the nurse rang to say the vet had called in sick, (probably just looked at who was coming in that day) and sent us to another practice not far away. 

It was a small blessing, he did touch her and pick her up to weigh her. My heart always bursts when I see someone pick her up, she’s so compliant but I know she’s frightened. I explained she’d had an extreme reaction to the vaccination and he warned me that it might happen again with the second. He also informed me what I was dreading hearing, that it might mean is that she has FIV and FHV in her system, very likely if she’s from a feral community. It was terrible information but it was a huge relieve to hear someone commit to their job and say something other than the torturous:  “I dunno”. 

Do you want a biscuit darling?

Her reaction was much milder and shorter lived second vax around, and I found a guardian angel in the form of a manager at Pets At Home. He engaged like a proper human being and gave me the best advice I’d got from anyone, better than any of the vets and nurses. He just said that extremely ‘high quality’ cat food, especially with such I high meat content, could be too rich for her. It’s like being given lobster and champagne when you’re poorly and what you need is beans on toast and a cup of tea. Well, I am eternally grateful to that lovely, kind, caring man with well informed common sense. Thanks to him she is now happy, healthy and fighting fit on one specific type of Felix chunks in jelly and nothing else, served in comfortable potions at intervals six times a day. She’s clearly a crisps and chocolate kind of girl, just like her mam.