Non-cat-lovers should probably skip the rest of this piece since the situation has gone from bad to worse and back again so many times that I've lost track of how often I've decided in the dead of night that I would have to have him put to sleep, only to wake up in the morning and find signs encouraging enough to make that seem an impossibility. The trouble is that we have no vet in Göreme itself and only vet technicians trained to look after cows and horses in neighboring Avanos and Ürgüp. To make matters worse, few people around here believe in euthanasia, not even the vets.
So here's the scenario as it unfolded. Prevented from squatting by the broken hip, the poor cat developed chronic constipation and lay on the bedroom floor, his whole body convulsing like that of a woman in labor. Nothing I could administer, not fish oils, not almond oil, not yoghurt or rice, nor yet even human laxatives, could ease his distress. Finally I dragged him back to the Kayseri Vet School to find it barely functioning even on the Monday after the Şeker Bayramı holiday. “There's an operation that could be done. It involves cutting him open, taking out his intestines, cleaning them and putting them back again,” I was told, which sounded distressing enough even before the vet went on to add, “but there's no one here who can do it. You would have to go to Konya or Ankara.”
Two days earlier two friends and I had held the cat down and administered an enema to no avail. That enema had been relatively small and not at all scary. Now the vet pulled out a syringe longer than the wretched cat's tail and inserted it into his rectum. It was not a pleasant experience for cat or owner, and I was less than thrilled to be handed a second syringe full of liquid and told to repeat the operation the next day. Back in Göreme I called on the assistance of the same stalwart friends, one of whom had worked as a vet's nurse in Australia. Between us we managed to get the liquid into the poor beast, who promptly vomited up feces, a disgusting phenomenon none of us had ever seen before but that the Internet assured us was a possible consequence of chronic constipation.
The next day brought the inevitable violent diarrhea. Then the cat stopped eating or drinking. I was beside myself as to what to do, and it didn't help that he would still rally enough to cuddle up beside me on the bed suggesting that he wanted to go on living. Finally, miraculously, he seems to be on the mend. But for any publisher out there looking for ideas, my dream Christmas present would be a book called “Where there is no vet” that focuses on pets rather than farm animals. Pretty please.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
