Tom (The Cat With Nine Lives)

by Linda

Sometimes, a cat will come into our lives, in an unexpected, magical way. In the case of Tom, he was a beautiful little kitten stuck up a neighbour’s tree ...

I was setting off for my daily walk and the neighbour asked for my help as I was tall enough to reach into the branches!  I duly lifted him down and he just followed me ... nobody seemed to know where he came from, or whose he was and so it was decided I would take him home to keep him safe, until the owner made themselves known. I affectionately called him Tom as in Tom Kitten from Beatrix Potter.

I contacted the local vet, put up posters, and even put it into the Echo, publicising a kitten found in my area (I didn’t put a full description to protect him from anyone undesirable).  Tom was a very beautiful blue kitten, round face and the build of a British Blue although he had green eyes instead of amber.

A week elapsed, and no distraught owner contacted me at all , the only daily phone call was from my sister to see if I still had Tom (He was so pretty he had made an impression).

Weeks went by and still this beautiful kitten was ‘homeless’ and I was getting very attached to him ... I  knew he would need to be vaccinated and eventually neutered but my dilemma was not to intervene if he belonged elsewhere ...

This was all prior to microchipping being a legal requirement and so eventually I made an appointment with the vet for a vaccination and advice. The advice, twenty eight years ago was if no one was trying that hard to find him, maybe assume ownership.  I went ahead and Tom became our very much loved cat ... with a microchip to our address.

Tom was adored by my three year old daughter and she would cuddle him, put hair ribbons on his ears and push him in her doll’s pushchair and he appeared to love every second ... they were inseparable.

One Christmas, when Tom was about seven, I noticed  he had started to strain to urinate; returning over and over again to his litter tray. I didn’t think he seemed right at all and  I rang the vet for an appointment.

The receptionist told me it could be serious as it could be a blockage and to bring him in straight away.  After many tests we found he was forming struvite crystals in his urine and this could be remedied with a special diet ... this was an immense relief.  I remember my two other cats, were very jealous of this food and would try to steal it from the cupboard it was stored in, was it super tasty or cats just being cats ...?

Move forward a few years, and I started working for the vets I was a client of.  Tom would come in regularly for his boosters and health checks, and when he was about nine, a small heart murmur was detected ... this could be remedied with a regular tablet.  Tom was on his urinary diet and Fortekor for his heart murmur and was looking and feeling well.

Time went by, until one day I looked at Tom and thought he had started to look very thin; a visit to the vet proved this to be correct and he had a blood test.  The blood test showed Tom to be suffering from Hyperthyroidism ... he needed regular checks and meds to establish correct medication and eventually he had his enlarged thyroid removed.  This was fine until six months later, the other thyroid enlarged and Tom, yet again, was on the operating table ...

When Tom was about twelve, I took him for his regular booster vaccination and health check and the vet looked very carefully into his eyes ... one of them had a dark demarcation in it.  A thorough examination proved to be bad news, Tom had a tumour in his eye ... he would need an operation to remove it ... an enucleation.  I was devastated but knew it would save his life.  With a very heavy heart I booked his operation as soon as possible, dreading it.

The vet operated and it was a success, the wound itself healing beautifully to give Tom a permanent wink ... he looked like a much loved old teddy bear thereafter and earned himself even more cuddles.

About three years later, our beautiful Tom had yet another scare, he was frothing at the mouth and looked very ill.  It was a Bank Holiday and we had to take him to the Emergency Vet, we were very very worried and thought he was dying ... he looked so listless and lethargic.  The vet admitted him for a blood test while we waited ... we felt so bereft and anxious and all promised each other to be brave when we got the results.  Eventually the vet returned and to our surprise she was smiling and said, “Tom has incredibly good bloods, we think he is worth a try.”  We signed the paperwork and Tom spent his Bank Holiday in intensive care ... we collected him a couple of days later and were amazed at how good he looked after fluids and TLC.

For seventeen years, our beautiful Tom shared our lives, he had been through so many serious illnesses and conditions and with each one, entrenched himself deeper into our hearts.  His beauty in his youth had been replaced with character and battle scars and he looked like our own little war veteran.

In my job as a receptionist, my role involves dealing with many clients with many different concerns and very often if I have a cat owner with worries, I find myself saying, “oh yes, I had a cat with that ...” little does the client know it is always the SAME cat I am talking about.

 I have often mused  on the fact that although he was technically ‘free’ Tom turned out to be our most prized possession. He was definitely the cat with nine lives, the very first one being when I plucked him from my neighbour’s tree.