“You don’t have two cats, you have one cat in two bodies. Your cats are a single unit.”
This was said to me by a friend of mine, who is a very highly regarded feline specialist vet. Which is why I can’t tell Leila’s story without Milo’s as well.
I am going to start our blog with the story of how we came to be ‘us’.
It started on a tropical island in Thailand. I wanted a friend for the tiny white kitten I had been hand raising from a month old. I had him and his brother together, but being far to young and his brother even tinier, Freddie had fallen sick and we lost him. This left Milo alone for the first time in his short life. He was sad. I went back to the Animal clinic, the vet / rescue centre on the island, where Milo had been born and there, alone in a cage, sat a little black and white kitten with no collar. I remember asking if she had a home and when the vet said no I opened the cage and lifted her out. She snuggled into my neck and asked ‘can I come home with you?’ Ok so she didn’t actually speak, but I swear I felt her ask, and that’s the story I’ve told her many times over the last 5 years we have been together.
After persuading Craig my then-boyfriend (now husband) that we needed two cats, the next day I brought her home. She was a little peeved to find an over-excited, over-friendly kitten trying to be her best friend, but eventually she came around.
She chose her own name as well. Strange I know. I just had no idea what to call her. I started trying out all the names I could think of, saying them aloud whilst looking at her. when I called Leila (most people would spell it Leela, but we don’t) she miaowed and ran over to me. She does that almost every time I call her – unless she doesn’t want to, she is a cat after all.
All was fine for the next 4 years and 9 months. We moved to a new house with a huge balcony on the 4th floor of a building and she decided she was going to be an indoor cat. I was fine with that. In April 2013 I started a two-year teaching contract in Bangkok. The cats were coming with me but Craig was staying on the island. We would go back in the holidays. They were not happy. Our apartment was much smaller that they were used to and the air was polluted and dusty. I was seeing signs of stress in both of them which upset me a lot so Craig and I agreed that they would go back to the island to live with him. Then he was offered a job in his home country of Canada. By this time we were engaged and it was a good move for our future. We had a friend who was willing to move into our beautiful sea-view apartment and look after the cats until we returned at the end of March to get married, pack up our lives and move to Canada, cats in tow.
With one week of work left, 4 days until Craig returned 2 weeks until our wedding, I got the call. “It’s Leila.” My friend said, “She’s fallen from the balcony. Her leg is broken and maybe her jaw as well.” They had come back from a night out and found what the first thought was a tom-cat who had been in a fight. When they picked up the cat and came into the light, they realised it was my terrified little Leila.
X-rays revealed that the jaw was not broken, just badly swollen. Her right front leg was shattered. The vet on the island could not fix it. Leila had landed on a little breeze block wall, the corner of which broke her leg. I found her collar there a couple of days later when I came from Bangkok to bring her back with me to a vet there, to see if they could operate. They put pins into and along her bone with an external fixation on, which should hold the bone in place while it heals. They did the best they could.
At the end of April Milo and Leila flew to Canada to be met by Craig’s sister while Craig and I went to England for 10 days to see my family. Then we joined them in Canada. They have done around 38 hours of traveling to get here. I’m glad now that they did all of those ‘practice’ trips to Bangkok.
That is how and English girl, a Canadian boy and two Thai cats came to live in Alberta, Canada. I will write about Leila’s medical progress (or rather, lack of) in my next post. For now though, she is happy.
