Today we have a special guest post from Gigi in Austria, sharing the story about her sweet cats Nikki and Kathi who are now over the Rainbow Bridge.
I’ll start with the story of my former cat Nikki. Her proper name was Berenike – Nikki for short.
Seventeen years ago, a friend of my husband came home and found a mother cat with two kittens in his bed. One of them was a kitten with extremely long hair. All his friends wanted this cat, and I did not tell him that I wanted her. However, my birthday is on Oct. 10th,. He called me and told me he had a birthday gift for me – it was Nikki. He said he will give this precious cat only to me. He knew I had a car and money enough to care for the cat when she needed a vet and to have the best food!
At this time I had only one old cat at home for Nikki, named Momo. But this old cat died a year later, at 16 years-old. After that cat died, Nikki was alone and stopped eating! She was too tiny, only fur and nothing else. I asked the vet about her, and he said if she is drinking water, it would be okay. After some days my husband gave Nikki some raw chicken. I called the vet and told him that Nikki was eating! What? He asked. Raw chicken? Not good, because it can have salmonella!
The vet said that the best thing I could do would be to get a mate for Nikki, and best would be a black one, because there are people who are doing very bad things to black cats. So, I got my black cat Kathi. But Nikki and Kathi never became a really loving couple – Kathi the modest cat, Nikki the princess!
Now about my black cat Kathi, who’s proper name was Nausika’a, from the Greek Saga.
I went in our local animal shelter to search for a mate for Nikki, and hoping for a black one per our vet – and there was one!!!! All the other cats were on their pillows or in their baskets, but one – the black one – was in the middle of the room playing with herself with a small ball. I took her into my arms right away. She looked at me like “please take me away from here.”
But she was a stray cat, who gave birth to some kittens in this shelter. I wanted to think about it. I went home and came back two days later – same story – her eyes said: please, my brains told me: wait! I waited again three days and then came back, and there was this black cat waiting for me! This time I could not withstand – I took her home.
For the first three days at home, Kathi was a shy but very brave cat, sitting on my lap and letting me know that she would be the best of all cats ever. But on the fourth day, she ambushed Nikki, my husband, me and the whole apartment, haha! Because of her former life as a stray, I thought she would go wild on the balcony, jump on the trees in front and attack the birds. But, she did not try to get out. She did get a bird once. She brought a wing of this bird to her daddy, haha, the bird she has eaten! Next time a lizard took a wrong way turn and came in. Kathi got him suddenly and had a really good meal!
Kathi turned out to be a good cat and very very intelligent. Sometimes, I even thought she could understand what we said or what I was thinking. She knew it all. She never was sick, I only got her from the shelter with rotten teeth, so the first we had to do was to go to the vet to get rid of her teeth, poor cat! At night she used to sleep at my feet, I loved it!
Sadly, Kathi’s life ended suddenly one day – or we did not see or notice that she had problems with breathing. Cats never tell you that they are sick! In September 2022 she suddenly cried that loud for one second and fell to the floor. I took her to the next vet, a x-ray told us that she has gotten water in her belly which pressed to her windpipe – she could not breathe anymore. I asked to vet if I could bring her home again, she said: no, she would suffocate in your arms. I could not stop crying…..
The problems with Nikki have been many. Even as a kitten she got sick, she was so tired and could not breathe. I brought her to the next vet, who gave her two remedies, in the evening then she was nearly up to die. At midnight I rushed to the night emergency clinic. A very nice vet was there who told me that these remedies are for dogs and toxic for cats, also not even allowed in Austria! He resuscitated Nikki and found out why she was always so sick. She had a bag of water in her lunges which are pressing her heart.
Unfortunately, there is no surgery for this for cats. You can imagine how often we had to visit the vet, how many pills she had to eat. Nikki gave up eating her pills after two years and I was thinking – that’s the end. But Nikki overcame her illness and made it 17 years. At the end she became sick with the pancreas and pills no longer helped. She died in May 2022. The whole family in tears.
We grieved over their loss but are happy now to provide a home to our new cat Medea. But Nikki and Kathi will always be in our hearts and in photos on our walls.
🌈 🐈🐈⬛ ❤️