five years ago today

 

Today is an anniversary of sorts. Five years ago, on this date, I walked into the Animal Welfare Shelter and picked up Lola.

I’d seen her on the website while searching pictures of cats to see if my Angel had somehow ended up there after being stolen from my front yard three weeks earlier. He hadn’t. But there was Lola, tiny, scared, looking very much like she needed me. I scooped her up from where she was hiding in the corner behind the baskets, while a bigger ginger cat watched from a perch on a high shelf.

Being an older cat, at eight years, Lola was cheaper to buy than a kitten. She was already spayed and microchipped and we were soon on our way home. Once there, she scooted out of Angel’s carrier and disappeared under the bed, where she stayed for the next four days. Nothing tempted her to move even close enough for me to get hold of her.

I called in a friend who reached under with his longer arms and dragged her out. Traumatic for her I’m sure, but she’d been under there without food or drink. I put her back in Angel’s carrier and walked around to the vet. He took one look at her eyes, declared she had a migraine and gave her a pain killing injection. She was feeling much better by the time we got home and ate for the first time.

And then the other problems showed up. I don’t know what she ate before I got her, and it was soon very clear that the new food wasn’t agreeing with her. Back to the vet. Almost two years of getting to know what food suited her and what amounts, were interspersed with frequent visits to the vet because of her migraines which I came to recognise by her disappearing under the bed where it was dark, and refusing to eat or drink.

We were also still getting used to each other. At times I was angry with myself for bringing her home and resentful that she wasn’t Angel. I’m sure Lola noticed. There was also the problem with her scratching great raw patches into her skin, always around her neck and under her chin, necessitating even more visits to the vet, for antibiotics and cortisone for whatever allergy was causing it. 

I learned that Lola didn’t like to be picked up and held, but was happy to lie on the raised foot section of the recliner while we watched TV at night. She also like getting under the covers and sleeping next to my ribs, if she was developing a headache I could tell by her temperature and often enough scooped her out of the bed into the carrier. If I waited until morning, she would be under the bed where I couldn’t reach her and my long-armed friend had moved away.

On our most recent trip to the vet, I saw a new doctor who suggested that Lola might have flea bite dermatitis, even though she doesn’t have fleas. If she had been bitten at any time in the past, that was all she needed to develop an ongoing allergic reaction. The doctor suggested I give her a monthly flea treatment and that could help. She was right and Lola is now scratching far less than before. Almost not at all.

I’m happy to say that we are now used to each other, Lola occasionally meows when she is hungry and last night I was scratching her back while we watched TV and every time I stopped, Lola would pat my hand with her paw as if to say “keep scratching”, so I did. She has put on weight, a whole kilo since I picked her up five years ago and seems now to be a very contented girl. I found her adoption papers and discovered her birthday is July 7^th, so she is now 13. We have many years together ahead of us. I still miss Angel.