## 40 Seven lives

Many people say that cats have seven lives. Our beloved cat had certainly seven ... She passed away during the last week after many beautiful years with us. I related her life story in a post on the French blog, a few years ago (1). A long story and I'm not going to simply translate it now. We don't know anything about how she ended up in the car park of a delivery warehouse. It was during a hot summer and I trapped hear after a long week.

Everything seemed normal but she was certainly thrown away by someone who had kittens. And certainly with a lot a violence, a shock because she had severe trauma and ... retinal detachment causing progressive vision loss. We went to see some specialists for her eyes, but before all that, we had to cure her behavior : She couldn't sleep ! She was aggressive too and a vet predicted that she could become more and more aggressive. It didn't matter for us and we have found someone who was able to calm her down using treatment techniques that we might modestly describe as alternative... with little or no medication. An old guru vet...RIP
That's for her 3rd two lives. She had also complications during sterilization. She had a very severe coryza and she could have passed away. No, she was always fighting for life. Even when she lost her tail, injured when she got caught on an obstacle with her long hair. Long weeks with a collar to protect her wounds but she was alive ! 

For her eyes, there were so many issues : Intraocular pressure because of an infection, caused by the trauma. weeks of ear drops to cure that. Then, the retinal detachment needed regular check-ups. And the specialist saw strange things marks on the iris. He suspected a cancer and wanted to do an enucleation. We went to see the best french specialist (he did also surgery on a tiger recently) and he saved the eye, proving it was only cysts. He did it twice and then, weeks of eye drop causing strange reactions sometimes because the medication are made for humans, not for cats.

She had also problems with anorexia. She has never eaten a lot and wanted always something new. We were some kind of testers for everything on the pet food market, ah ah...but not paid for that, alas. Never a fat cat but not thin too. We had to weight her frequently and that's how we saw that she was losing weight and refusing to eat. Some vets suspected a cancer or another illness, a "Chronic inflammatory bowel disease", IBD ... She was 10 and needed heavy surgery if we wanted to know if it's a cancer. We did not... She was unable to have the cancer treatment, anyway.

And finally, it was not a cancer but IBD and then another illness : A chronic renal insufficiency (CRI). It cannot be cured and you can only slow the propagation in the kidney. When she started to eat less and less by herself, to drink more, we helped her. We had to use syringe with a special paté (it smells bad for cats) with some medication. Several times a day...and the more she was ill, the more we had to help, sometimes with a syringe each hour. She who was so difficult with vets, scratching and biting them, let us do whatever we wanted with her. Sh knew we did a lot for her and it's only 2 days before her death that she shows us it was enough. She had stopped drinking.

In the last three years, she was completely blind but an example of courage : She was climbing cat trees, running in the house, etc... She had her routines to know where she was. Sometimes she called us to help her but so rarely. She was fusional, especially with my wife (I was the one with the medications, ha ha...). She has never bitten us and she often slept with us. More than 10 years for the only cat we had as a kitten. Many people would have given up on this treatment, which is often expensive and complicated to administer. The would have opted for Euthanasia, probably. In France, if we have social security and lower cost for medicine, it's only for humans. And Euthanasia is sometimes too easy for animals when it's not even possible for humans.
She never gave up despite life's difficulties, and we were always there to help her get back on her feet. She will always remain in our thoughts when we sometimes take the easy way out. Such wonderful years.

See also
=> https://www.cheziceman.fr/2018/histoirefeline/ 1- Une histoire féline

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