Our Miracle Kitty

Five and a half years ago, I had one of the worst weeks of my life, when my best friend, my baby, Morgana, wasn’t sitting by the back door when I get home. I spent the next few days wandering the neighbourhood, shaking a bag of treats, calling her name. Days later, a neighbour called, having seen my posters, to explain what had happened. She had been crossing the busy street during heavy construction-related traffic, and had safely made it across the two lanes when an impatient driver decided to make himself a third lane for a block as no one was parked: He hit her going 70 km/hr (in a 50 Zone) killing her instantly. And though I still miss her, it is not Morgana for whom I write today. From that first evening, there was one cat who responded to my calls, meowing hoarsely for help.

Our neighbour had lost his home recently, and though he brought along his dog, he abandoned her. At first I couldn’t bear to look at her: She wasn’t my precious baby. And though a part of me still clung to the idea that Morgana was just on a walkabout, it wasn’t long until those hoarse attempts at mewls began to tug at my heart strings. We began leaving food outside for her, and eventually brought her in and set her up in our closed-off back room. When the neighbour called, Ian and I bawled for a bit, but went and cuddled our adoptee. In a way, she rescued us when we rescued her.

I have to admit, I haven’t always been as patient with her as I might have been. She wasn’t the baby I raised from kitten-hood, and though she was an absolute sweetheart, she had a few behaviour issues. She seemed to have an eating disorder for a while, gobbling up her food too fast and then vomiting it up. I realized she was in the wrong head-space when we fed her — inhaling her food as if she was still starving, and I applied some of what I’d learned from The Dog Whisperer, Cesar Milan, to teach our cats to sit for their food. Her weight yo-yo-ed a bit at first, but eventually it settled somewhere around overweight. I eventually found another black kitten to adopt, years after Morgana departed, and then Ian’s Maine Coon Mo passed of cancer. A year and a half ago, I found the perfect kitten for Ian, with just the right temperament, and brought him home. I noticed right away that he had a very strong hunting instinct, but it wasn’t till months later that a tech at the vet’s suggested he might be part Bengal.

Little Dante must indeed be at least 1/4 Bengal, as he has all the energy, intelligence, instinct and territoriality of that breed. He has a tendency to chase our two females, despite our best efforts. He is leash trained, and perfectly docile when a piece of string is attached to him, and even with enforced play-time to burn off his energy, he still occasionally chases them, biting them on the neck if he catches them (with is either a very dominant, or very flirtatious behaviour).

All of this to say that he has been stressing out our two girls, and we hadn’t noticed that both had stopped eating as much. It was worse with Deanna, our adopted calico (so named after the Goddess of the Hunt, because she had her own strong hunting instincts): She dropped a lot of weight in about a month. A few weeks ago, Ian mentioned that he thought she might be sick. I was busy preparing for Ottawa ComicCon, and distracted, but suggested Ian bring her in. He delayed because we were facing worsening financial issues. Last Wednesday, she was noticeably lethargic. By Thursday, all of my instincts were screaming at me to get her checked. Not only was she barely moving, but my experience in the lab of Dr. Jeffrey Mogil had taught me to evaluate the animal equivalent of our wince: Our baby was in serious pain. Wait the weekend, Ian suggested, take her in after we get back from Victoria Day. I couldn’t do it. I called the vet, and they fit me in right away.

She wouldn’t have survived the weekend. The vet was extremely concerned. Deanna was jaundiced, dehydrated and constipated, and her blood sugars were off the chart. The doctor explained that cats cannot lose weight that quickly: their livers cannot process that much fat without enough protein to synthesize the enzymes required. She was in liver failure, severely diabetic, and would likely die without hospitalization. Ian and I were devastated. We both felt extremely guilty for not having brought her in earlier. We were responsible for the severity of her illness, and could not face giving up on her. The vet explained what hospitalization would involve (an option we most definitely could not afford), and brought her a plate of specialized food. Deanna surprised all of us when she ate the whole thing.

The sight made the decision for us. She was fighting to live, so we would fight to save her. The vet was understanding about our financial situation, and explained what we would need to do to help her. My time at the lab gave me plenty of experience giving subcutaneous injections (giving a needle just under the skin), and we had both given cats pills before. The vet showed us how to force her to eat if necessary, and sent us home with a saline bag, the specialized food, insulin, and a few pills, along with instructions to call her in the morning. Her one concern was that the diabetes had progressed to the point of diabetic ketoacidosis: That in the absence of insulin, her fat cells began converting fat into ketones. Any type 1 diabetic is familiar with this: If they do not take care of themselves, they breath can become sickly sweet as a result of this process. The condition in Deanna’s case, could lead to kidney failure.

We brought our baby home with the knowledge that she had two death sentences, and might not make it through the night. The next morning we discovered she’d puked up her supper, and she was now refusing to eat. We tried to feed her as we’d been shown, but it was difficult on all of us. We returned to the vet that afternoon with heavy hearts, afraid we would have to say goodbye. The vet wasn’t deterred. She hadn’t vomited everything she’d ingested, and though her blood sugars were extremely low as a result of not eating (and her bladder empty from fear of the car ride), she saw Deanna still fighting to live. Despite the severe lethargy, and hypoglycaemia, she was actively looking around. She kept beckoning me and Ian to her side with her eyes: We couldn’t give up on her yet.

The doc gave us a solution for the feeding: using a syringe to make things easier. We were given instructions to feed her every 2 hours, and to call her in the morning. We were also to set up the litter so that we could get a sample of her urine to check for those ketone bodies. A blood glucometer had been ordered for us, but the vet didn’t feel comfortable charging us for it yet, as she was still too close to death. Several clients had been kind enough to return expensive unused medication when their own cats had passed, and those were passed on to us.

Deanna, just before I brought her to the vet

Home again we returned. I remember wandering the aisles of the pharmacy shortly thereafter, looking for something, but in too much shock to remember what. Ian went out to get us food when I got back: neither of us could bear to leave her alone. Many guilty tears were shed by both of us, but they only drove us to be the best nurses possible. I remembered getting the news that my little sister was in the hospital on a respirator with severe pneumonia: I burst into tears and lost it while home, but had to steal myself to drive four hours to Kingston to visit her. I called back that steely resolve, and refused to allow myself to feel that desperate pain in her presence. It was the only thing that kept my hands from shaking too much to give her the injections she needed. Outside of her presence, I did everything I could to numb myself: I felt that if I allowed myself to break down, I wouldn’t be able to find that calm again.

We returned again to the vet for the third day, again terrified that we would have to say goodbye. I dropped off Ian to find parking, and found my husband in tears in the examination room. There were ketone bodies in her urine. The vet explained that she had looked again at the literature, and discovered that the kind of insulin we’d been given wasn’t necessarily bad for an animal with diabetic ketoacidosis, it just wasn’t recommended. Further, her blood sugars had skyrocketed back up from all the food we’d given her. And somehow, she seemed just slightly better than the day before. We were just to continue feeding her as before and now to check her blood sugar every three hours. Home again we went, with more instructions, more medication, and the faintest glimmer of hope.

Sunday was difficult, I won’t lie. We had some challenges, but we got a little hope. That evening, after one of her feedings, she shook her head on her own to get rid of the food bits she’d dropped. Monday morning, she did that several times over the course of the feeding, and she seemed to get the hang of eating by syringe. Monday night, when we left the door to the back room open, halfway through our regimen, she took off running, and ran all the way across the kitchen before stopping to rest. We cried. Tuesday, the vet was pleased with our progress thus far. She couldn’t believe how quickly her blood sugars seemed to be normalizing, and the news that she’d started licking at missed bits of food were encouraging: It was the condition of her liver that was causing her nausea, so the slow return of her appetite was a very good sign.

Since then, we’ve seen slow progress, but each little tidbit made all the work and lack of sleep worth it. Yesterday marked one week since her first vet visit, and today her ears seem a little pinker. We’ve recorded each feeding and each blood glucose reading in a Google Sheets chart, and the results are astounding. The vet had explained that most diabetic cats take several days to even begin to respond to insulin: Yesterday Deanna’s blood glucose readings were all within the normal range. Hope is growing within me, despite my fears and misgivings, but Deanna keeps showing more hopeful signs. She has returned to eating with the other two cats, and her energy levels seem to be returning to normal. My days may be spent alternating between feeding her and myself, then anxiously awaiting text updates from Ian while I’m at work, but I have never been more proud of myself and my husband for making it thus far. And maybe, just maybe, we might have rescued our sweet rescue kitty. Tomorrow will be the penultimate vet visit, in which a blood test will reveal the condition of her liver.

The vet called as I wrote this, to thank us for leaving news. She sounds hopeful, and extremely pleased. It seems, even five years ago, it wasn’t recommended to treat diabetic cats at home. And this vet had never heard of a cat having diabetes and hepatic lipidosis, let alone surviving both conditions. Our Deanna is a miracle kitty.