Merlin

We had to say goodbye to our 20-year-old cat on 9th December. In spite of having numerous problems, he was doing incredibly well. He had been on Felimazole for hyperthyroidism for many years, but after losing weight just before my trip to Scotland at the beginning of last year, we increased the dose and after a few months, he weighed in at over 5 Kg. Then there were his kidneys, which I suspected, but our wonderful vet confirmed my thoughts, that as long as his weight was good, we shouldn’t worry. He started having seizures in the summer, but another medication controlled those very well and his aches and pains were helped with a tiny dose of Metacam, combined with a joint supplement.

He blossomed through the summer and autumn, only giving us cause for concern during a particularly bad heatwave. Not wanting to risk anything, we took him to the emergency vet one evening and asked for him to be put on fluids and kept in their air-conditioned room. We brought him home a couple of days later, none the worse for his adventures. During all this, he continued to be independent, demanding to be let out morning, noon and night. Literally. He had initially been trained on our Freedom Fence, but not wishing to risk him with our badgers in his advancing years, we bought him an Omlet catio which he used for the last couple of years. More recently though, he preferred wandering free, closely followed by my husband. It didn’t matter that it was a dark and frosty morning when we got up… Merlin was always at the porch door wanting to be taken out. It was the same as I prepared his special feed (one of many during the day) at bed time. When it had eventually warmed up on our Aga and I popped my head outside the back door, they were often out of earshot.

He was still catching rabbits in our fields at the age of 18 and I miss seeing him enjoy life to the full. It was his thyroid that finally caused him to stop eating and even though he had weighed in at 4.76 Kg just a few days earlier, we couldn’t allow things to continue. So for one last time, he was carried around the garden that he loved, even stopping to touch the llamas and goats as they came over to see him. In an ideal world, I would have asked the vet to do a home visit, but due to the pandemic, this was no longer an option. I’m grateful for the vet who kindly allowed him to be sedated with us in the car and for making things as easy as possible considering the circumstances.

He has been buried in his beloved catio, where he spent anything up to 7 hours a day during the warm summer months. (Regularly monitored, of course). He was a cat in a million and I’m so glad we got to spend so many years with him. The photograph above was taken in the kitchen on a sunny day a couple of months ago.