Cleo
I know that every cat owner thinks that theirs is the specialist fluffiest cuddliest adorable precious little baby but mine just had another health scare and I felt like writing about her, so here we are.
It was January 2018. Both me and my partner were very depressed. Had been for a long time. It took us both far too long to sort our respective mental healths out. When you’re suffering from depression, it typically manifests as a voice in your head telling you “you’re terrible”, so it makes it quite hard to understand that “I am actually depressed and I need help” when you’ve got that secondary voice responding to the realisation of the obvious with “you’re not depressed enough. Depressed people are much easier to sympathise with than you. You’re actually just terrible.”
Anyway so it was a weekend and for some reason I had a car. I don’t have cars often. My commute to work makes more sense on a train and I only rent them whenever I have errands to run because the cost and hassle of actually owning one is too much of a headache. I think we had it this time so I could clear the shed out and take some things to the dump but I can’t remember.
I randomly woke up that morning and just asked my partner if we should go look at cats at a cat rescue shelter. We like animals, especially cats. Whenever we went for walks around the neighbourhood, we would always stop whenever we met a cat. The previous Christmas when we were walking around looking at Christmas lights, we found a cat in a street we went to a lot and it spent a lot of time rubbing itself around our legs, and we both felt a bit better.
My partner found one on the blue cross website that she suddenly became fascinated with. She said she wanted to see it because (in her words) ‘she doesn’t look like a real cat. She looks like a cartoon drawing of a cat brought to life’ — and that’s probably the most poetic and appropriate description you could ever come up with for Cleo.
So we went to see her, not sure what we were really doing at first. The Blue Cross had about six little rooms housing the cats. Apparently Cleo hadn’t had many visitors because she has stage 3/4 kidney disease. No insurers would touch her, and no one could face adopting her. Apparently it was a result of having had bleach in her system at one point.
We called up and arranged to see her, went down there, they opened the door, and immediately Cleo poked her head out of the cat bed at the other end of the room, meowed at the top of her voice, leapt out, and rushed over to us. Roughly translated, that meow meant “Right, they’re my humans. Take me home.”
You don’t get a choice when that happens.
They told me she had 2 years to live at best. I googled everything about stage 3 kidney disease and everything was telling me that they were right and she didn’t have long. I’d had cats as a kid. I knew it would be painful. But after that first meeting, I had to do it.
We visited her a few more times before they let us take her home. Those times weren’t quite as magical as the first time. She used to do this thing where when you’d go to stroke her, she’d hold her claw out, extended, just staring at you, not doing anything, just warning you “look, I’ve got these, don’t try anything”. I think her previous owners were probably very stern with her because whenever she jumped on surfaces in the first year we had her, she looked nervous and looked at me like she knew she was doing something wrong.
They told us to confine her to one room for the first few days, but she started scratching at the door the first evening we had her and we just had to let her go exploring.
It really didn’t take her very long to get settled. The house became hers in about two weeks. She refused to drink from the water fountain we got her and for some reason to this day will only drink from human mugs that I’ve left around the house at various places and change regularly.
After a couple of months of living with us, I remember her jumping onto the bed at 5 in the morning and waking me up. She put her head on the pillow next to me and stared directly into my eyes for a good ten minutes. I managed to get a picture. I know I look grumpy in it because I have a face that won’t smile on cue for some reason (that and I had just woken up) but I felt such a strong bond form in that moment.
They told us that she had to be an indoor cat only. We tried taking her out on a harness occasionally, thinking it would be nice for her, but you can’t do cats on a harness, its literally impossible. When we tried it once, she ran back to the door and started scratching and meowing, looking terrified. Every time you tried carrying her outside, her heart would beat really fast and she’d wriggle out of your arms and run back inside.
At the start of that summer, after work, one day, I decided to try and slowly introduce her to the back garden. I opened the door and sat outside on the grass, watching her. She stepped up to the door, and she looked behind her, almost like she was expecting someone to tell her off. She looked back at me with an expression that said “really? I’m allowed?”
I started having these supervised garden sessions with her more often, and she really enjoyed it. Eventually, she didn’t need the supervision. She would only go in the neighbour’s garden and sometimes over a fence at the back in the bushes. We told the vets how much she’d taken to the garden and they were really confused when I said she was jumping on shed roofs. A cat on stage 3 kidney disease was supposed to be sluggish, but Cleo had so much energy. She’s also freakishly strong. Try picking her up and she’ll meow really loudly, tolerate it for about thirty seconds and then wriggle aggressively and push you off. Whenever I have to pick her up to put her in her carrier to take her to the vet, she puts her arms around whatever she’s sitting on, not even with her claws out, and its impossible to move her.
Anyway, about November that year, she started slowing down. What had been a lively cat all summer was now just sitting by the door, occasionally getting water. Refusing food. We took her to the vets, they did blood tests and were convinced she was moving into stage 4 of her kidney disease. We knew what that meant. It just seemed so unfair. We knew she didn’t have long when we got her, but it only felt like a few seconds ago that that door was opened in the blue cross.
I said I’d throw as much money at her as necessary. The vets said they would flush her kidneys, do a few more things and send her home. She was in the vets overnight. I still remember I was about to drive myself and my partner to the vet to see her and I just burst out crying and couldn’t move. It was such an intense bond that had formed in such a short space of time. I spent most of those days just feeling paralysed.
They told us she’d survived the flushing but she wasn’t eating and was still looking pretty lifeless and not making any noises. They let us in to see her and the second she saw us she meowed really loudly and started eating. They let us take her home, anticipating we had weeks at best, but then something odd started happening. She was bony and thin and a lot less energetic, but she seemed to be getting better. I remember her jumping on the bed at 4 in the morning and kneading for the first time in a long time. I woke my partner up because I thought it might be the last time.
The vets phoned us and told us they found E.coli in her urine. That must have been what this was. They gave us this thing called pronefra that we had to give her to keep her kidneys functioning.
And just like that: she was fully recovered and the odd bump or two aside, she’s now outlived that initial estimate of 2 years max by almost 4. It’ll be 6 years in January. She was apparently never allowed outside before we got her and it looked like she’d only have one summer outside, now she’s had 5, and she’s made the most of it. She’s only brought a bird in once. She used to bring in frogs for a while. She mostly just sunbathes and jumps across shed roofs and walks along the fence next door, teasing the dog in the garden below.
The vets don’t get it. I bring her in, tell them she’s acting perfectly normally, still insanely energetic for a cat with her condition.
She was incredibly important to me over the pandemic. My partner got very sick in 2021, sporadic lockdowns kept happening, and I felt very alone and isolated. I needed Cleo to come over to me when I was feeling down and headbutt me, dribble on my head and start kneading my clothes. I can’t begin to stress how important she was to me during that difficult time.
I’ve been away a few times over the years and whenever I’ve been away, she always sleeps on clothes I’ve left lying around and refuses to leave them. People say cats don’t love you, but if you’d seen what this one does when I come home after a trip, you’d have a hard time making that case.
I got Covid in February 2022. I immediately isolated myself in the living room. Somehow we managed to make it through this entire period with my partner not catching it. Our house is very small, but my partner managed to keep separate from me and cook our meals and go out and get my medicine and by some miracle she didn’t get it.
I was really out of it, just drifting between awake and sleep for the first week of it. Feeling really heavy. Cleo stayed in the room with me the whole time. Didn’t even scratch at the door wanting to leave. She flopped on top of me and demanded stroking.
People underestimate how good pets are for your mental health. Yes its sad when they go, but I’ve improved my mental health a lot since I got her. Of course, going to therapy was a key pillar in improving my mental health, but having her as this constant companion that doesn’t want anything but food, affection and the occasional bit of financial ruin has been completely worth the odd scare. I do know its going to be much worse when I have to make the final decision when her quality of life is in a state where its significantly diminished. We’ve just had a huge scare where she wasn’t using the litter tray, and the vets always take an extra grave tone with her because of the kidney disease. There were a couple of days of intensive tests and talk of a gargantuan-priced operation that would decrease her mobility and mean she’d have to have a flushing procedure every six months. I didn’t want to put her through that. Having to consider, y’know, that option felt like being shot in the stomach. I know her enjoyment of life is more important than my attachment to her.
Fortunately we’ve been given the relieving news that she doesn’t need it. They’ve also said her kidneys haven’t deteriorated at all, so we must be doing something right. The bill for all the tests and hospitalisation was huge, but manageable. We’re just going to have to be a bit frugal for a bit, sell some things and put some plans off. She’s worth every penny.
