Lily lives with her siblings, Bravo and Charlie, in a two-bedroom apartment. I don’t want to take this conversation away from Lily, but to be politically correct, I have to tell you all that Charlie is a female cat! Shortly after taking her and having assigned her this name, we came to know that she was actually a female cat, and ever since, her name has been undergoing evolution: from Charlie to Carlos and from Carlos to Choti (which is the Urdu feminine word for small), and we don’t know what will come next.
So, back to Lily! You won’t see her doing much except for waking me up in the morning for food or pestering me again for food at night, and only occasionally, in between, she will be seen hiding behind a door or a chair waiting for Bravo or Carlos to pass by so that she can launch her surprise ambush, scaring the shit out of them. She has a personality indicative of, “I don’t give a damn about my caretakers,” but once in a blue moon, she breaks that pattern (maybe to prove us wrong) by coming to us and allowing us to give her pets – we love this, of course, but as I said, it happens only once in a blue moon.
But this is not what Lily was like when we first took her in almost 3 months ago. It was quarter past 1 at night when Charlie and Bravo were alerted by a sudden, high-pitched cat vocalization, and they started responding to the cat’s mews. I initially brushed off the cat’s cry, thinking it must belong to the neighbor, but the mews did not stop; in fact, their volume and frequency kept increasing, finally forcing me to leave my warm blanket on a cold December night.
And when I opened my apartment door and went near the stairs, an adorable, yet underfed and malnourished, white cat ran upstairs towards me and started brushing against my feet. We assumed she was lost and took her in. My partner filled a spare cat bowl with kibble, and she was so hungry that she finished the food in no time.
If you’re still reading this, you’re probably assuming that the story will unfold somewhat like this: we rescued her, she became our pet, and she’s still living with us. That’s partly true, but the story didn’t unfold this way; rather, what followed was an entirely different one, in which Lily emerged as a small but resilient warrior.
Attempting to Find Lily a Home
We never wanted to adopt Lily. If any of you have ever rescued a cat, you know that taking in a cat comes with lots of responsibilities: taking your pet to the vet, getting them vaccinated, spayed or neutered, taking care of their diet, and most importantly, giving them quality time. These things aside, to make matters worse, we had recently lost our eldest cat (Cade, who was 14; I will share more about him another day), and weren’t mentally prepared to take in another pet.
Let me briefly describe what Lily looks like: she is a white mixed-breed with heterochromia, and in countries like ours (where people are breed-conscious and cats other than tabbies are often a status symbol), such cats are not normally strays; they are most often lost. Her overall appearance made her seem lost, so we assumed her owner might be looking for her and would come to take her back. Thus, we went around to the other apartments in our building and asked if anyone had lost a pet, but the answer was always “no”.
Meanwhile, we kept her in a separate bedroom while restricting ourselves and our two other cats to the other room. The next morning, when I opened the door, I saw Lily coming out of the room’s dustbin; despite arranging the warm bedding for her, she preferred to sleep in the dustbin. If you’re a cat parent, you know that no matter how hard you try, they will do what they want. As I mentioned earlier, she was extremely malnourished, and when she walked, you could clearly see her bones from afar. We also found her extremely lethargic and covered in fleas. We took her to the nearest vet for an initial examination, had her dewormed, and treated her for fleas.
Three days had passed, but no one had come forward about their lost cat, and at this point, we reached a conclusion: either she was lost or intentionally abandoned. Abandoned cats are common in our country: people bring in cats, oblivious to the commitment required to care for them, and when the reality sets in, they abandon them without considering how traumatic these experiences can be for cats.
Since no one had come forward and we were not ready to adopt another cat at the moment, we decided to put Lily up for adoption. We reached out to friends, posted on social media, and we started getting responses from Lily’s potential caretakers, yay! To our disappointment, many people who contacted us were breed-conscious (and completely unaware of cats’ essential needs), reaching out to have a fancy breed, while others saw her as a potential profit-generating machine whose kittens could be sold in the market. So the interviews with these people went horribly.
Lily’s Health Decline and Eventual Diagnosis
As mentioned before, Lily’s health was not the best; she was lethargic and would sleep all day, though she would still always come for food. So we took her a second time to a more qualified vet, where we had her blood tested. It turned out that her blood count was fairly low, which the vet attributed to either panleukopenia or stress (that’s really lopsided).
While we waited to find the right home for Lily, we found that her condition was worsening. Now, most of the time, taking a cat to the vet is simple. You get the cat into the car, take it to the vet, and have it examined. But what happens when you don’t own a car, your vet is an hour away from your home, and you’re two people in your mid-20s, trying to fight the spectre of inflation with your freelance work? In such a situation, you’re pretty screwed.
Luckily, we had some savings that we decided to spend on Lily, and for other expenses, we decided to fundraise. After spending quite some time at the vet and encouraging him to run all the necessary tests, we were given a highly unexpected diagnosis: Lily had autoimmune disease, particularly primary hemolytic anemia. Her blood count was detected to be extremely low, and it was progressively declining. On that day, her HCT (a measure of red blood cell count) had dropped to 11. The doctor prescribed all the necessary medication, but the steroidal treatment was to be continued for long-term use, with the vet planning to gradually reduce the dosage based on the cat’s response to them.
The vet also told us to visit the clinic every day for a week so he could run a CBC on her to see whether her blood count was increasing or decreasing. We followed his instructions, and each day the medication seemed to be doing its magic: Lily’s blood count was increasing, and on the last visit, it reached 23, still below the normal ranges, but a sigh of relief! As Lily’s health improved, our visits to the vet decreased, and the vet, too, slowly tapered off the drug from 3 tablets a day to 2.5, and then 2.
Current Status and Learnings
Now, Lily is just taking half a tablet each day, which, we hope and believe, will be discontinued after our next visit to the vet. And throughout this journey, Lily has shown extreme resilience. She never put up a fight when her medicine was given, and she never missed her meals. Now she plays with Bravo and Charlie, chases them, and sometimes overpowers them. We never thought any cat would tire out Bravo, but guess what? He hides from Lily and her continuous pounces and ambushes.
If you were to ask me my most important advice for taking care of a cat with autoimmune disease, I’d highly recommend a skilled vet, being consistent with medication, having lots (and I really mean lots) of patience, and providing the cat with a calm, stress-free environment. It helped that Lily had a lot of resilience, but these factors have really helped her stay ahead of the disease.