When I first came to Belgium I was introduced to the cat, Gamin. I say introduced, it was more like briefly glimpsing the elusive and cautious creature, who at that time lived in the garage of my future father-in-law. Grumpy, evil and dangerous only begin to describe the character of this cat and I, having grown up surrounded by a multitude of cats with their respective characters, thought that he would not prove to be too much of a challenge to win over.
Gamin would spend his time usually outside or in the garage. He was always brought in at night and often slept on top of the hot water boiler, for obvious reasons really. When he was upstairs he spent his time hiding behind curtains or chairs and sometime joining my father-in-law when he went to the toilet, he is a bit odd that way (the cat not my father-in-law). He was regarded as being an indoor cat and had his litter tray provided. Unfortunately he has suffered from stones in his bladder and due to them being quite painful he had a stretched bladder with a very pink and raw tummy where he had been constantly licking. In all his life was not bad but not quite comfortable, especially when taking into account the obsessive and disturbing cleaning routine of An, distressing and disturbing for the cat and others living in the house, not for An!
In 2007 or thereabouts, Gamin moved house and came to live with us here. I fitted a cat flap and it became apparent that in fact he is very much a night stalker and would often wander off, even at his age. Naturally this concerned An who was not used to this behaviour from cats, but I was used to it. He would come back with the odd scratch, having won or lost the argument over territory. We had it on good authority that he was a bit of a terrorist with the neighbour's cats. Initially I fitted a regular cat flap but then An noticed that we had an intruder and so I had to fit a magnetic one instead, training the cat to use this took a bit of effort but then he got the idea eventually. In fact he is still a bit of a sod and waits for us to open the door when we happen to be around, like loyal owners we do!
The effect of the intruder was to upset the cat and cause a resurgence of his bladder issue. In fact this got quite critical and I thought we were going to lose him. It turns out that there were stones in his bladder and these had either not been noticed or removed on the previous occasions when he had experienced difficulty. The Vet advised, and both An and my father-in-law had followed it, that the cat should be given very expensive and special diet food. This was meant to help with the stones issue. Now I have grown up around cats all my life and we had never fed them any special food nor had we noticed any problems with this. There were plenty of others but no bladder stones that I was aware of. After much persuasion I convinced An that we should put him onto normal wet food, which he loves, funnily enough. This was after he had a major and rather traumatic operation to have the stones removed. This must be around 2 years ago and now his fur has grown back and he has not had any further issues. Scroll on to the most recent visit to the vet...
A journey to the vet, for Gamin, is no pleasure trip. His yellow box signifies the impending unpleasant experience that awaits him. He runs away but then does not really put up much of a fight when we get him into the box. On this occasion and unusually, he peed in the box, which was handy as the vet did not have to obtain a sample the hard way! Anyway, we got there and the vet took a while before seeing us, which gave the cat enough time to begin his aggressive 'keep away from me' growling. I could not find my leather gloves, which was a bit of a shame as he lashes out when he is examined and I fully expected this to happen again. He was given his usual injection, under protest and he even managed to put up with the stethoscope on the ribs. Not for long though. The vet took a swipe to the arm, which left two parallel red marks. Ok enough. He went back in his box and then we started to get the line about the special diet food. Now I don't mind when people give you sound and well founded advice but the evidence presented proved beyond doubt that the food was not causing any problems with stones. The stubbornness of the vet was beyond belief. The, expensive, urine tests showed no abnormalities at all and we had been feeding him for some time on whiskas. The whole bill, including worming and flea treatments was 98 euros, I can't help but feel seen off. I do not recall having to do annual check ups for our cats, just the boosters when they were young, but then things may have changed.
I should add that now, if fact not long after he moved in with us, he became a lot more friendly. In fact he even comes to sit with us when we get home from work and very rarely, he actually gets on your lap. There has to be a special blanket though. But now he purrs a lot more, he nuzzles me, most annoyingly when I am trying to read. He also is a lot more vocal than he used to be and he often lets us know when he wants attention. He is a lot happier than when he was living at the old house, although An still insists on putting him to bed in the garage, which he is used to. He does not use the litter tray anymore as he has a nice garden to use...
An and I were discussing the fact that at some point he will join the other cats in the next life. Unfortunately An made a slip of the tongue and said 'kid' instead of 'kitten' heaven, at which point I imagined kids screaming and shouting, pulling his ears, tail and chasing him about... Utter chaos, I cannot imagine he would like that somehow. In fact kitten heaven would not be much better judging by the look of disgust he gave a visiting kitten one day. He is a grumpy old man who barely tolerates the presence of another cat, but he would give way eventually after he has established who is boss. To make matters worse An corrected herself and said he would like it in pussy heaven, at which point my tea sprayed across the room as my mind took a short trip to that idyllic location.
I did have a visit from a work colleague with his wife, they brought their dog too. I did warn them that the cat usually runs off when visitors come and that when he sees the dog he will nip away as well. How wrong was I? Brave boy, he sat there almost daring the dog to make a move as he hissed and growled at the poor thing. It was the equivalent to a standoff, although clearly the dog felt a lot more intimidated and scared than the cat and refused to look Gamin in the eye. He did not back down or give up his place, only withdrawing to the garage once the dog had left the house. I was surprised and a little proud too.
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