...carelessness?

I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. On a somewhat less traumatic (but nevertheless painful), theme I've been wondering about our unfortunate little cat, Biggles and whether or not there's something we could have done differently. He is one of only around a dozen cats in the world to have survived "Feline Infectious Peritonitis" thanks to the innovative use of a drug called Interferon. After causing much interest and becoming a minor celebrity at our local Vet hospital last year he settled down to normal cat-type life of wondering around the house & garden, catching insects, eating, sleeping, eating, sleeping, eating, sleeping, staring out of the window, eating, sleeping.... Then a few weeks ago his routine seem to focus more on just the sleeping until he began to lose weight and we took him off to the vet last week fearing that the dreaded "FIP" was back. Well, it was good new/bad news: FIP has still gone but he's got cancer!

As he is still cared for under Sainsbury's Pet Insurance we have some options for him which seem rather exotic and expensive: believe it or not, he has to go to Cambridge University Vetinary Hospital for a biopsy, surgery and possibly chemotherapy. This is on top of his earlier bad luck - when he was born his mother died and all his siblings along with her, before he was born his father died too. He was rushed to a foster mother at 2am where he survived for a week before being swapped to another mother and then started, at last, to thrive. Then he & his adopted brother Basil both got FIP, Basil died and Biggles (as above) managed to survive again.

Well if cats have nine lives, maybe he has one or two left..? Watch this space...