The giant cat is now gold plated

The fact we own a giant cat that is Pete’s legacy cat means that all bets are off when it comes to paying to make sure it stays healthy.

Last week it was not healthy, and we had a torturous few days where we weren’t sure he was going to be ok.

I had noticed Albert/Bertie had been vomiting a bit and, like any parent knows... you have to make sure the kids are properly sick before you take them to the doctor, lest you be sent home as overreacting ... so I had left it for the weekend just to watch him and see if I wasn’t just imagining how many times he was being sick.

Also, to be honest, I was just waiting for him to regurgitate a giant hair ball onto my doona like he has previously and he would be all good again.

But come Monday, he was not ok. He was dull and lethargic and he hadn’t touched his food and he was just not himself.

Cue: vet visit to one of what must be the happiest vets known to mankind. Sophie the vet is a like a bottle of sunshine.

She considered my information, took the cat for an inspection, suggest an x-ray but assured me there was nothing to worry about, the only real concern was if he had consumed something that was stuck inside.

At this point I should note that the eldest child has been running a sideline business (not unlike a one-woman sweat shop) making cloth masks in this time of Covid for pocket money.

The dining table is littered with cloths and scissors and elastic and scraps and off cuts and ... sewing cotton thread.

I had busted the cat licking the thread off the machine at some point the week before ... he was readily consuming it as the cotton reel spun around as fast as he swallowed. I grabbed the thread hanging out of the cat’s mouth and started retrieving it from the inside.

I looked like some sort of a manic magician pulling endless handkerchiefs from a top pocket as I kept pulling hand over hand of thread from within the cat.

As it turned out, Albert has consumed thread on other occasions I hadn’t caught him and his insides were in a bit of strife.

My sun-shiny vet wasn’t quite so as she explained what sort of an operation the cat needed to rectify the situation, and offered some ballpark costs.

It was, about now, when I began with my ‘I don’t care what it costs, fix him’ mantra to the vet. It also came with ‘you know the backstory... he can’t die’ ...

Because the upside of living in a country town and everyone knowing stuff, is that the local vet clinic and all it’s staff totally know the backstory of this Maine Coon cat which was chosen but never met by a now dead husband and father, and just how precious he is to the family.

That Monday night I had distraught children worried about the cat’s fate and I had to have the conversation with each of them individually that the vets would do everything they could because they know how special he is to us, and I would pay whatever it costs to get him home, but if they couldn’t fix him, or something had gone so awry inside, we wouldn’t let him live in pain.

It was more hard conversations. More tears. More cuddling. More placating emotional children who knew what it was like to lose a loved pet.

So I spent most of that night wide awake thinking of all the possibilities. There were some pretty selfish ones in there of the cat just not being allowed to die because I simply could not to tell the children something else they loved had died; and the sanity of offering $10,000 to fix a cat (thenkids had demanded to know the limit of my ‘I will pay anything’ statement).

Surgery began at 1pm the next day.

My amazingly happy and positive vet had spoken to me just prior and said something like ‘it should be an hour, maybe two, but look, we won’t know until we get in there ...’

It got to 4pm and I’d heard nothing.

By 4.30 I was becoming quite anxious.

Kids hockey training started at 5pm and I was quite literally muttering like a crazy lady and talking of the cat being in surgery like he was a

human.

The post-op call from the vets came just before 5.30pm.

4.5 hours of surgery.

Turns out, Albert had some cotton wrapped around the back of his tongue ... and he had swallowed the rest of a length of it... which measured the entire length of the digestive system of a main coon cat... we know this because they couldn’t get the final 5cm piece of that white cotton as it was stuck in stools in his colon at the bottom end of the system.

It was one whole long, unbroken length of string... all the way through him. He also had a nice bundle of green cotton in his stomach.

It took 4.5hrs, 8 incisions inside him (6 along the length of his intestines) and a stomach incision that would rival the best (from rib cage to tail) to rid him of the cotton.

But he was alive.

Sunshine Sophie was exhausted after having performed the operation. But we found out, every staff member had scrubbed in there at some point, emotionally invested in the outcome on our behalf, just willing it to be a success.

Two days later he could come home. Not necessarily because he was ready, but because he was so stressed at the vets he wasn’t eating or using his bowels (animals, like humans apparently, can’t leave hospital post surgery until they do both...)

I had begun taking bets with people about how much such a 4.5hr surgery, x-rays and three nights’ vet accommodation might cost.

When we collected him, the lovely admin lady looked up the invoice and her face dropped... she began worriedly utter things like: Had the vet given us an estimate of cost? Did I know it was going to be quite expensive? Did I have pet insurance?

I told her I had been taking bets, that I told the kids I would pay up to $10,000 to keep him with us, and if I got out of it all under $5,000 I would think it was cheap.

She told me the cost.

I replied: oh, is that all? Are you sure? That sounds cheap? Absolutely no worries at all!

She nearly fell off her chair. She had never had someone who had a bill the size we did react in that way.

I also reminded her though, that it was Pete’s cat and so, he was paying as I transferred the money from his estate to pay for what was now clearly a gold plated cat.

The reality was: he is too special and too important and too loved and too everything to let go... and I probably WOULD have paid $10,000 if that’s what it took.

On Albert’s return home, we needed to contain him. Cue: sourcing a giant crate that would fit a post-op cat, a bed and a kitty litter tray... as, unlike dogs which can get out and be walked for bodily releases, cats can’t.

I was to become, for the next 14 days, someone who had a caged cat and kitty litter in my loungeroom so he would feel part of the family.

Sophie the vet was quite sure once he was home he would begin eating and toileting as usual.

We were home less than 10 minutes and he was in the cage using his litter tray.

Sophie had also warned me Albert had been given an enema the day before to get things moving... the results of which were so utterly spectacular and revolting and gag inducing and room clearing and fur matting that I cannot describe them here.

Suffice to say, later that night I sourced clippers and crutched the cat for ease of toileting and cleaning for the cat, and was in the cage on my hand and knees trying desperately not to vomit as I cleaned the litter tray, the bed, the water bowl, the bottom of the cage and everything else that had been hit with the post-enema consequences - while simultaneously ordering the children to light every candle we owned - so we could actually inhabit our own lounge room again.

As I often say to people - we are a ridiculous circus sometimes... this was another case in point.

Fast forward a week and we have survived - the cat is very unhappy about his caged abode, and his limited feeding regime while his digestive system recovers.

But he is happy, meowing, purring and home and alive and we couldn’t be happier.

The kids have even taken to getting in with him, to watch Netflix together, so Bertie isn’t lonely...

And every single cotton reel is put away every night in a lidded sewing box!