Well, you would not be far wrong in some aspects. Chatty considered herself homed as she has been the one Catcuddles guest cat with "outdoor rights" for the past couple of months. We felt that since her one main obstacle to attracting adoption interest was her vocalising, progressive enrichment of her environment, pairing up with another cat -Mr Cuddles- and more space would possibly do the trick of minimising her vocalising. This seemed to work a treat, Chatty was coming along fantastically well and we were all preparing ourselves for missing her once adopted.
Then on Friday exactly 2 weeks ago, she was on her regular midday explore of what we thought was the garden network at the back of Catcuddles: a row of 20+ gardens on each side of a rather long Victorian block of terraced houses. We thought 40-odd gardens would keep this inquisitive lady happy and she would not need to, or seek to go beyond. Well, she did.
Late afternoon, Chatty came back, through the open french doors linking the Sanctuary garden to the main house, meowed her typical "hello" and made her way to her big basket by the fireplace which enjoyed all of the afternoon sun. But for once, Chatty was pretty quiet. A few minutes later, my antennas were up; I walked to the front room and to Chatty's basket and started stroking her. She was lovely as usual albeit lying rather strangely. I continued to give her long strokes on her back all the way to her tail, mimicking a mum cat grooming her kitten -they love these long firm strokes. My hand went to her tail and pelvis which she usually arches to meet my hand but all that happened was her tail came up a bit. Then I saw it. There was a tiny bit of blood coming out of her vulva.
Now, cats do not have periods, we all know that (do we?) Just to be sure, I rushed to the laptop and googled, "do cats have periods". The answers was a resounding "No, and if you see blood take to vets immediately".
I do not remember much of what happened next aside of the fact that I found myself and Chatty at our vets in double time. Chatty was by then obviously not her usual agile self and I knew something was wrong but all I could think of is, Please God, Make whatever she has be treatable and I will shut up about her meows once and for all.
Slowly but surely over the past months since her arrival in spring and the hard work that ensued to make her happy again, Chatty had made herself at home in my heart and I had not quite realised how much I cared...
(to be continued...)
