Remembering Megat

I thought it would be nice to have at least one post for Megat, our rainbow kitty here, since we are putting him on FB as well. We had our FB account active only this year since we had to put up Jeffrey for adoption and FB would reach a bigger audience. Jeffery, now Cody's mom found him on FB as well. 

This was Megat the year he was in remission for lymphoma. He was an all-black cat down to his whiskers and pawpads. On May 22 2009, his vet, Dr MP told us she suspected that he had cancer from the lump near his intestines. On May 28, we were told that his ultra sound showed a large lump and she suspected stage 4 lymphoma and gave him 4 months. But thanks to his doctors at ARVC, he went on to live quite a good life for 3  more years after his remission from lymphoma. Dr Ly called him a "miracle cat." "You are a miracle cat Megat," he said and he kissed him on the head. 

This was what he looked like when he was living the community cat life in a carpark. He was thin and quite dirty. At dinner time I would call him and I would hear shrill cries of him asking me to wait while he ran down many levels for dinner. As he was not the most attractive of cats, he was frequently chased about and residents would scream when they saw him. Even his previous caregiver, the 'old aunty' said he was a bad luck cat as he was black.

I took over as his caregiver and put a collar on him with my phone number in case he got into trouble and on the 14 Dec 2006, I decided to bring him to the vet for neutering. The vet found that he was already neutered. He had to remove 3 canines and told me Megat was FIV+ and I should put him back at the carpark as I had other cats. THAT was not something I could do as he was already in trouble with the residents and I was told that there were complaints about him. It was rumoured that he would be taken by the AVA and euthanised. So he came to live with me. I figured he could do no harm to any of my cats with only one canine. But of course he was not called Shaolin Megat for nothing. He boxed them all and ran after them. He learnt many fighting skills as a comm cat.

One of those skills was how to wrassle with an impertinent young kitten.

Another was how to take it easy. His way was just to put on his most scary face and no one will try to boss him about!

He was 10 when he came to live with me. His first few years were easier ones, then he had to fight lymphoma and fought chemotherapy, TCM and the indignity of sang hwang lingzhi suppositories. He was in remission for 3 years.  I had to help him to the bridge on 4 Oct 2013. You can read all of this in his blog here. Dr Ly said that we should document his journey as lymphoma is not the end and a cat with lymphoma can be helped in many ways. So essentially he died when he was 17 of abdominal edema. One of the best advice that Dr Ly gave me was that he should live his life and die with the cancer (as lymphoma is not curable) but he should not die of chemotherapy. 

When he had the second bout of illness, suspected to be caused by his lymphoma, I made the decision not to do chemo as he was already 17 and he should not be in THAT pain as well. It was I think the best decision I had made for him. He had quite a good life with me I think even so.