Nine lives? Not if you don’t vaccinate!
I intended to write a post one day soon about our growing family of wild island cats 
😺. It was to be a happy post! But this week the story got a sad twist.
As a little bit of background… There are no dogs at all on the Gili islands, but there are many cats. Too many actually. A lot of the beachside cats do ok by getting titbits from tourists at the restaurants. But often the inland cats struggle to survive. Locals don’t mind cats, but they rarely look after them. Expats have organised regular desexing clinics for a few years now to try to control the population.
At the end of July last year, when I first came to the bungalows, there was a very scared, emaciated and badly wounded wild ginger tom cat that visited the yard. He’d scrounge for rubbish food scraps in the big open hole in the ground in the back corner of the yard (a common way the locals ‘dispose’ of rubbish). That cat we called Mr Lonely and he has since adopted us as his regular feeders, for pats when it suits him 😉, and now a dry bed in the wet season. His story is a happy one – so far – and one for another time.
So on to this story…
There was another wild cat that visited the land. Sitting on my porch, I’d sometimes see her hopping across the yard. Literally she’d hop from one corner to another. At first I thought she was a rabbit! She is a tabby, has a bit of a humped back, a short tail and had a very big belly, so I named her Mrs Honey Bunny.
Mrs Honey Bunny gave birth to two kittens some time after that. A fiercely protective mother, she kept them hidden. We only knew she’d had them as her belly got suddenly smaller. She would come out daily for food and even sit close to us, but she has never, still to this day, let us pat her. Her older kitten (Long Tail) who was a few months old came with her most times, playful but wary.
We first spotted the new kittens around September when they must have been about six weeks old. Wild and skittish, they began to venture out from their hiding places. For a while they made a home behind our pile of bricks and building supplies when started to build our kitchen. They’d poke their faces up and peak about, but hide just as quickly if you approached them. I named the tabby and white and one Big Ears, as befitted his appearance when he poked his head up. He always seemed to make eye contact with me, and I liked him from the start. Later I named his brother Speedy Gonzales. Speedy was crazy and as he got older would often run out to the dinner bowl at a hundred miles an hour, skid to a stop or run into things, and continue on his frantic way. Speedy shredded our kitchen mat and tried to ruin my yoga mat. I was not happy Jan! Recently he started climbing the poles of the kitchen verandah and played with Made’s strings of beaded shells. He really was a terror and sometimes I called him our own Meno Madia terrorist. Despite high pitched meowing like a tiny little pipsqueak every meal time, we never got to pick up Speedy, he was just that little bit too wild.
Big Ears was a totally different kettle of fish, and spent a fair bit of time fighting sicknesses, nearly succumbing to cat flu at one stage. He developed a penchant for seeking comfort and would sleep on my colourful cushions and liked a bit of attention. Sometime before Christmas he started letting me pat him and pick him up. Unlike Speedy, he never ever showed any signs of fear nor bared his claws nor raised his hackles. Also around that time Mrs Honey Bunny, pregnant again, started hissing at her boys. She no longer wanted to share the food bowl with them. It was finally time for them to wean.
The last few weeks Big Ears became my firm favourite and would hardly leave me alone, sitting on my iPad, climbing into my lap, wanting to sleep in the bungalow. If Mr Lonely is our king, Big Ears was becoming our prince. He was the cutest sweetest little fella, and even more so when he snuggled up to Speedy, and when he licked Speedy’s cheeky face clean. 
Just over a week ago I got word that there was an outbreak of a deadly virus on the island – feline panleukopenia – and many cats around our area were dying. It is like parvo in puppies – ruthless. I found out vaccines were available from Gili T (the neighbouring island). At first I thought, nah, our cats are tough, and I didn’t want to incur the expense. But after a little research, and hearing about how the cats were dying around us, I realised how truly horrid this disease is, and figured if I wanted to sleep at night I had to at least give it a go.
So the next day I hopped on the boat in the morning, waited till the afternoon for the little cat shop there to open, and returned with a stack of vaccines in the afternoon.
With my neighbour, an English lady who is a bit cat mad too, I walked around our local area and vaccinated a number of cats that she feeds every day. A few that she wanted to vaccinate were already dead or dying. And I vaccinated all of ours (apart from Mrs Honey Bunny who we can’t catch and couldn’t be done anyway as she’s pregnant).
Sadly, I was shocked to see that Speedy was already sick when I got back. He faded fast and was in terrible pain with wretched vomiting. He soon became too ill to move, and although I tried to give him honey and water and put him in a little bed in a cage, he was very stressed and resistant to being handled. He died the next night. It’s hard to believe that, just like that, the little terror won’t be around to annoy and amuse us with his mischievous ways anymore. Big Ears wasn’t home when we buried Speedy, but the next day spent a lot of time sitting on the grave… 
😿.
After Speedy died and Big Ears was still looking well, I hoped the vaccine would work quickly enough to protect him. But four days later he came down crook. He let me nurse him in his little cardboard-box bed as soon as he felt crook. Made and I were due to go to Lombok for the next few days for the major Hindu ceremony that occurs every 210 days – Galungan – but I decided I couldn’t leave Big Ears. Dr Google told me that over 90% of unvaccinated cats that get this virus will die, even with intensive care in hospital. But I had to give it a go, and I couldn’t leave him to die alone.
I went to the human clinic on the island here and bought sterile fluids. And my neighbour had a giving set. Over the next couple of days I had him on a subcutaneous drip, and gave him antibiotics and tried to give him honey and water. It was a battle, and I guess I’ll never know if I prolonged his suffering or not. I sat with him and talked to him and patted him. As the time went on he became more distant, but he always responded to my voice, and seemed to appreciate a pat, especially under the chin. But yesterday I could see that there was no way he was going to make it. I spent the day singing to him and even did a couple of recorded guided meditations beside him. Tried to encourage him to steady his breathing and stay strong in letting go. He died in the afternoon. Sadly it was far from a peaceful end. The poor fellow didn’t deserve to die like that.
I buried him beside his little brother. First time I’ve buried an animal on my own.
This experience has reaffirmed my absolute belief in vaccination. The disease is easily preventable, and is part of the routine vaccination schedule for kittens in western countries. I wish I’d known about this awful virus a month or two ago (and that there was a vaccine available here!).
I guess this virus – which apparently flares up during wet season every few years – is a natural population control for the cats here. It lives in the environment for years (in Australia too) and most cats are exposed to it at some point. If unvaccinated and exposed to the virus in small amounts they may get a subclinical infection and go on to have lifelong natural immunity. I’m assuming that mature aged Mr Lonely and Mrs Honey Bunny have that. But if cats are not vaccinated and there is an outbreak of the infection they will die, and it ain’t a nice way to go.
And this experience has absolutely unequivocally reaffirmed my belief in euthanasia – for both animals and humans. Once I knew for sure Big Ears was not going to make it, a peaceful euthanasia would have been so much more preferable and kinder, and I wish I’d had the drugs to do it.
As a vet I toughened myself up for this sort of thing. But as bloody hard as it was, I always felt privileged and honoured to be able to euthanise a horse when I knew that doing so would prevent it suffering from prolonged pain and trauma. With just a simple injection, euthanasia was always an option to help them die smoothly and peacefully. Having also nursed my mother-in-law through her prolonged and very painful decline and right through to her passing at home, I feel strongly that humans should also have the option of a peaceful and dignified death.
I hope Mrs Honey Bun introduces us to her next kittens a little earlier, and that they are less wild, so we can handle them sooner and I’ll vaccinate them asap. Either that or I’ll have to toughen up and leave the cats to fend for themselves. Put the food bowl away. Hmmm, like that is ever gonna happen!
So it’s been a sad and tough week.
To little Big Ears, I will miss his company and his super sweet nature. I bade him farewell and hope he rests in peace with his cute little bro.
