The Joys of Children and Animals!

Life has taken on an extremely hectic pace of late! I should have been writing at a ridiculous rate of knots… however, apart from updating my website www.lovingmarilyn.com I’ve come to a standstill. At the beginning of June my eldest daughter who was pregnant with twins found out that she had pre-eclampsia and was admitted to hospital 37 weeks pregnant. They induced her labour and she spent three days in complete agony but not moving any nearer to giving birth. I was there just before midnight on Sunday 7th June when the consultant declared an emergency caesarean would be necessary – and within an hour and a half my daughter was delivered of two beautiful babies, a girl weighing 5lb 3oz and a boy weighing in at a very respectably hefty 7lb 11oz.

My daughter’s partner was in theatre with her whilst I waited in the empty delivery room, I felt in total fear and very alone. I grabbed a pen from my bag and my notebook and tried to make some sense of my feelings – I filled a page with goodness knows what as I had to abandon the whole thing, I knew I wasn’t making sense and I couldn’t find the words to express how I felt at that moment and I was to scared to write what I was thinking and fearing. I’ve not looked at it since and although I wrote very little, being able to write at that time did give me a brief sensation of comfort, someone to talk to, even if it was just a blank page!

Jai and Skye born 8th June 2009

Mother and babies are now doing well and I thought that was enough trauma for a while – how wrong I was!

Last Thursday I decided it was time to be more productive – as I have gotten into quite a bad habit of putting jobs off, be they writing or more physically active things such as housework, washing the car, working on the garden, anything really that requires moving! My youngest daughter was here and I decided that I should go and wash my car. I’ve owned it for around eighteen months and washed it twice in all that time, so Thursday was the day… It was a tough job, as I washed the wind blew across showers yellow flowers from nearby trees. The minute yellow petals and pollen sticking to the car leaving a powdery yellow paint on the wet black surface, spoiling the shimmering sheen I was aiming for. A forty-five minute job ended up taking two full hours. Once I’d finished all I wanted was a nice cup of tea and I’d resolved by then never to wash my car again.

My daughter’s friend owns a car wash locally, so I made her phone him for an estimate £10 for a wash and wax sounded like the bargain of the century!

Sitting with my cuppa and chatting to my daughter, my little white cat Marilyn ambled casually in from the garden. Marilyn is very much a house cat – during the summer she’ll sit in the back garden but she never ventures further than that, unlike Wilf and Molly who love nothing more than an all day adventure, Marilyn is more cautious. I have a fourth fur baby called Mabel and she’ll go a little further than Marilyn but not much – a friend recently found it difficult to work out how I could have four cats, two of which went out and two staying at home – he asked me if the two that went out got ‘security passes’ I quite liked that! Anyway, Marilyn had come in and Vicky, my daughter, had noticed she was breathing quite heavily. If I’d have been on my own it’s unlikely at that point I would have taken any notice as Marilyn’s a snorer and a very vocal cat, she’ll often have a chat with me – I’m used to her being noisy. She also seemed a little lethargic, and appeared to be having difficulty swallowing. I thought she had a fur ball, so still I wasn’t unduly worried. Despite not feeling anxious about this I did think maybe she needed to go to the vets so I phoned and made an appointment for two hours later.

The very moment I put the phone down on the vet I looked at Marilyn and absolutely knew something more than a fur ball was going on. I threw the phone back at my daughter and told her to ring the vets to tell them we were bringing Marilyn in as an emergency, whilst I went into full panic mode looking for the cat carrier which was in the loft! All this happened within minutes – we both struggled to get Marilyn into the carrier but managed. We ran to the car and I headed the two miles or so to the vets – whilst Vicky watched her she began to choke and bring up clear phlegm. We were both still expecting a long sausage of a fur ball to appear, so though we were panicky we weren’t thinking life or death at this point. Isn’t just the way it goes when you’re in a hurry every driver in front of you is about 96 and driving at 15 miles an hour in a 30mile an hour zone! Eventually we arrived at the vets and ran inside with her – the vet had his door open and was fiddling about on the computer, he must have been entering the details of the last client. By now we’re both screaming at the receptionists and the vet “she’s choking, help her” Marilyn’s eyes were the size of saucers, her mouth wouldn’t close and she looked horrific. It felt like everyone there was running on a different time line to us.

We eventually got her on the table and out of the carrier; she jumped off the table and flew down to the floor gagging and spurting blood from her mouth. The vet said she needed oxygen and needed to be transferred to the room next door and that we should put her back into her cat carrier. Well at that point I wanted to punch him squarely in the face – I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t carry her next door in our arms but he was adamant. So we squashed the distressed Marilyn whose white fur was now red, still with her eyes wide and her mouth open and bleeding, back into the carrier. When they got her next door she had gone blue, but they managed to stabilise her enough to get a vet and nurse to take her in the vet ambulance to the animal hospital.

We were sent home to await a call. I feared the worst and could not stop crying all the way home. Some people may find it difficult to understand how you can get so attached to an animal. I’m aware she’s a cat, and I understand the priorities of life but for me, she is high on my list of priorities as are all my cats. I can’t see the point in being a pet owner if you can’t give the animal in your care 100% love and attention. They rely on you for everything, and it’s your duty to deliver! I cannot ever understand people that treat animals badly, they are vulnerable and we have the power to choose to care for them or to harm them, there should only be one choice and it should be instilled into children from the start, teaching them to love and respect animals. I was appalled recently to read about the cat that was shot with an arrow from a crossbow and was fortunate enough to survive. I just feel completely at a loss to answer the question ‘why’?

People often baffle me…

Well, eventually we got the call to say she’d been transferred to the hospital, had been x-rayed but everything looked normal, except for the fact that her throat had swollen and that’s what was preventing her from breathing. They couldn’t find any foreign objects, they had expected that she had swallowed something or taken a fall and injured her throat/neck area. The following day after she had calmed down and had a comfortable night, they began more investigations under anaesthetic but still nothing showed up. They couldn’t find a cause and had to presume it was anaphylactic shock caused by an allergen such as a bee sting etc. We were allowed to collect her that night, and were sent home with a supply of antibiotics and a £500 vet bill!!! I’ve got to take her back tonight for a check up. The check up was scheduled for yesterday afternoon but when she saw her cat carrier she went totally wild and wouldn’t go near it! So… we went out and bought a new carrier (£35) which is wire and a top loader – hopefully I’ll manage to get her in there tonight!

Marilyn recovering 21st June 2009