Thierry tried to tell me.
Thierry my Sphynx cat was given to me. But this story is not about how he came into my life, but how he probably saved my life. Now we all like to think our cats love us. Little did I know Thierry really did. He must have loved me so much he was going to stop at nothing until he had achieved his mission of helping me at all costs. As I said, this story is not about how he came into my life. But I will just tell you that he made sure right from the start he was going to be part of my life. I had gone to collect one kitten, and came home with two. Thierry had smugly made his way into my life. He was a sick kitten. So although right from the first meeting he had made it clear he would love me forever, we became closer because of all the early care I had to give him to get him well. Thierry always liked to be doing what I did. His favourite hobby was helping with the computer. Him and his Devon Rex mate who I had brought home at the same time as when Thierry was given to me, totally wrecked my old computer. It was one of those massive old fashioned ones. They smashed the screen, chewed all the wires, and that included the broadband and telephone wires as well. I decided the only thing to do was to buy a laptop. That way I could safely store everything in a large plastic container. It was brilliant, hard as they tried, they couldn’t get to any wires, and the laptop stayed safe. Well that was until I needed to bring out the laptop to work on. For some reason most cats seem to have an affinity with computers. I just can’t believe the amount of work I have lost. The emails gone forever, that he deletes in one foul swoop. Never to be found in any folder or junk mail box. All the added words I have to delete because Thierry has run across the keyboard in order to massage his feet on the keys. And what amazes me is the way he finds things that I never knew existed on the keyboard. Never finding them of course when you could do with them. Backwards and forwards he would run across the keyboard when he thought it was time for bed. Time to feed him, or just plain time to give him attention. At times it would drive me mad. Nearly to the point of frustrated tears. So when he started the same game running across my chest, instead of the favoured keyboard, I just thought it was a new annoying game he had made up. I would sit down at night on the sofa with my legs up to watch the telly, and off he would start. Running at speed across my right breast from all directions. He would launch himself from the ground, from the arm of the sofa, and from the back of the sofa. I would have to put a magazine or a book over my right breast to try to stop him. He had me in floods of tears once because he just kept launching himself at my right breast and I was at a loss as to how to stop him. Then he started the same game in bed. Every night since a kitten he had wriggled down my back inside the bedclothes, then would crawl over my waist to snuggle up against my tummy as I lay on my left side. But he suddenly changed this lifetime habit. He started to wriggle down my front, but instead of carrying on straight down to settle in his place against my tummy, he would do a detour over my right breast. Digging his paws into my breast he would go over it, and round and down to settle against my tummy. It was painful, so I automatically would put my hand over my breast to protect myself. That was when I found the lump. Well I wasn’t sure it was a lump. When I sat, or stood up I couldn’t feel it. I could only feel something when I was lying on my side trying to protect my breast from Thierry’s punishing paws. I left it a couple of weeks. I actually thought Thierry had done it by all his constant games of running over my right breast. I thought he had caused a callous or something of the kind. I don’t know why I went to the doctor. I am not the sort to go. I could count on one hand the amount of times I had ever gone to a doctor. It took two weeks to get an appointment. I apologised straight away because I thought I was wasting the doctor’s time. The doctor had me in all manner of positions, but couldn’t feel the lump. She thought maybe there was a bit of thickened skin. But because one in eight women get breast cancer, she said she would fast track me up to the cancer centre just in case. That same day I got a phone call, a cancellation meant I could get an appointment in two days. I went and had a mammogram, ultra sound scan, and seven biopsies. The person doing the ultra sound told me I would need surgery. The consultant said I would be booked in for an operation just in case. I was told to come back in eight days for the results. It was a nightmare twenty five mile journey home in the dark on the bus. All my holes from the biopsies were so sore. And my head was swimming with thoughts. I had to change buses when I got to the nearest town to me. But the last one to my village had gone long ago. I had no mobile phone to ring for a taxi. And when I went to ring from the public phone box, it had been vandalised. It was a seven mile walk home. Then like a knight in shinning armour, a taxi pulled up in the nearby rank. He had hoped for late shoppers. You just can’t imagine the relief I felt. Eight days later I had the same journey back to the hospital. I was still sure it was nothing. I was never ill, I just didn’t do ill. So even though I had been told I would need surgery, I had even been booked in for the operation, as far as I was concerned they were wrong, and that it was a fibrous lump Thierry had caused by keep running over my breast. So it was a complete shock to be told it was cancer. I was told I would have surgery, then a bit of radiotherapy. Well it turned out to be an aggressive type of breast cancer. I ended up having chemotherapy, radiotherapy, plus a course of eighteen injections and a daily tablet to take for the next ten years. It’s been a living hell for the last eighteen months. And Thierry has been with me every step of the way. But not one step in the direction of my breast. I was worried sick about Thierry running over me after surgery. But I needn’t have worried. He had done his job of telling me of the cancer being there. Not once has he put a paw anywhere near where I had surgery. Until you have had cancer, you don’t know the fear, the loneliness, and the emotions you go through. People can’t help it, but they don’t realise how much they can upset you when they tell you to be positive. You don’t always feel like being positive. Most times you feel you are living on death row, and there is no positive. They tell you of someone they knew who had cancer, and they were fine. You want to scream at them I’m not that person, and what about the thousands that aren’t fine. Then you get the ones that tell you eating broccoli cures you. Or that sugar causes cancer. Or they know of a wonderful book that tells you how to cure cancer. I know they all mean well. But after a while when people ask how you are, you just say you are fine. It’s easier that way. But you don’t get any of these mental burdens from your cats. My three cats have stood silently with me all the way. I don’t have to tell them I’m fine. They have seen me vomiting, me crying helplessly as all my hair fell out. Crying because of the pain, because I felt so ill, so tired, and because of the fear, and the not wanting to face the day, let alone the future. They have never judged me, just comforted me. Now I have got through it. I have come out the other side. I can’t say I did it all alone. Because I didn’t. My three cats came through it with me, stopped me being alone, and gave me something to live for. And do I worry now about the cancer coming back. No, not a bit of it. I can rest assured that Thierry will give me full warning if cancer should rear its ugly head again. Next time Thierry tries to tell me something, I think I’ll listen a little harder.
