How A Persian Cat Saved His Brother From a Breeder

In the summer of 2001, one of my precious Persian cats died. Sultan was only two and a half years old, and though he suffered from cystitis and had a small heart murmur, the last thing I expected was to come home from work one day to find him stretched out on the carpet, his brief life over. I was devastated. In the last weeks and days, his loving disposition had soothed my aching soul, and made coming home from work every day the only joy in my rather joyless life. I could not accept that his little loving soul was gone, and depression quickly set in. I still had my Genghis, the pride and joy of my life, but for a time it was like the two of us, human and Persian cat, were just going through the motions of cohabiting. I later came to regret not showering him with the love I could no longer give to his little brother, but at the time my heart was completely numb.

I took to having little pretend conversations with Sultan's sweet soul, in which I'd tell him I loved him and that I was sorry for all the times I got made at him after he peed on the carpet. He'd then tell me that he loved me and that it was all okay. I told myself that having his ashes in an urn was still having him with me, in a way. His urn became precious. It was in this time of intense grief that something odd happened. In the weeks following his death, I had begun putting flowers on the shelf beside his urn. One day, I came home to find a huge amount of petals scattered on the ground directly below his urn, and my other cat, Genghis, sitting right in the midst of them.

Then something even stranger happened. Out of the blue, I felt as if Sultan was telling me, very clearly, 'go get my little brother'. Well, as it happened, the breeder I had purchased both Genghis and Sultan from was in Montreal, and I was moving back there in a couple of weeks. I decided to give Serena, the breeder, a call after the move.

That is how, one day in early August of 2001, I discovered that Sultan had sent me on a bonafide mission.

To be clear, there there were some very specific things that I was looking for in a new cat. For some reason, I resonate best with male animals, so this cat would have to be a male. I also wanted him to be from the same line as Genghis and Sultan, and since I was not in the mood for a very young kitten, he also had to be past raw kittenhood. Finally, I wanted him to be a cream-and-white bi-color Persian, just like Sultan was, though a gorgeous red-and-white bi-color like my Genghis was not out of the question.

So, I made that call to the breeder, and asked straight up if she had any kittens available that had been fathered by Genghis' sire, Tarzan, or mothered by his dam, Marmalade. Serena told me that Marmalade had been retired from breeding due to her age, and that Tarzan had died of liver cancer. Then what about Genghis' brother/ Sultan's father, Dagwood, I asked?

There was dead silence on the other end of the telephone line for a few moments. Then Serena replied, very thoughtfully, so thoughtfully that you could almost hear the gears grinding in her mind.

'Yes, we have one,' she said, 'an older one.'

'Is it cream-and-white?' I asked.

'Yes,' she answered.

'A male,' I pressed on.

Once again the answer was 'yes'.

Serena mentioned that someone else was also interested in the cat, but that if I liked him, she would much rather let me have him.

So, I arranged to see the cat. As it turned out, he was nine months old, and almost identical to Sultan in body size and the patterning of his cream-and-white. However, whereas Sultan's cream was of a type bordering on pumice, this cat was more of a fuller, almond sort of cream. His face was also a bit different, being peke-nosed like Genghis, while Sultan had a more standard nose.

Still the resemblance was eerie.

At this point, Serena told me she had gone back to work and needed to reduce the number of cats in her cattery. The reason she had not sold this little guy sooner was because she'd been thinking of using him in her breeding program, but now that she was cutting back, she wanted him to find a good home as someone's pet. Considering that Sultan had died so young, and that this would be the third cat I'd gotten from her, she offered him to me at a very reduced price. She also threw in neutering at her expense.

I decided to take him, not because she was offering me a good deal, but because my other cat needed a companion, and he was a good candidate. At this point, her husband made an interesting observation: since this little guy was so like Sultan, and even approximately the same size as he had been, Genghis might just accept him more readily. It turned out that this would be exactly the case.

Serena and I closed the deal, and I returned home. She would let me know when his neutering would take place, and after that, I could come and collect him. She even offered to have him declawed at the same time, once more at her own expense, if I wanted it done. I refused. My cats' glory is in their claws, and I thoroughly enjoy watching them use their retractable razor blades on strangers and veterinary technicians. The claws must stay! About two weeks later, Attila was ready to come home with me. Since I was unable to pick him up, Serena delivered him to my door. As she handed him over, she warned me that he seemed to have picked up a tiny cold while at the vet. I quickly showed her what a beautiful cat Genghis had grown into, and then she was gone.

Introducing a new cat to the current cat takes time and patience, and is supposed to be done in stages, so I put Attila into my bedroom. He immediately hid himself under the bed,where he remained for the next two or three days. I fed him by placing his bowl alongside the bed, in the hopes of luring him out. He would respond by sticking his head and shoulders out just enough to reach the bowl, eat, and slide back under again. He must have slipped out to use the litter box, but he did it when I was not around to see it happening. Then, much to my surprise, I opened my bedroom door one afternoon and out he marched, straight into the living room. From that moment on, there was no locking back in the bedroom anymore. He flat out refused to let that happen, yowling like a demon if I tried.

Genghis, meanwhile, studiously ignored him. His only reaction was to growl a bit whenever he passed his new housemate for the first few days, and that was it. He did his thing, and so long as Attila left him in peace, all was good.

The integration was successful, and surprisingly easy.

The next step was to arrange a check up for both my cats with the vet I was using at the time. For the first time, a heart murmur was detected in Genghis, while a possible heart murmur was detected in Attila. This meant having to go to a specialty clinic in order to have an echo-cardiogram done on both cats. Genghis was confirmed as having a heart defect, while Attila's heart was normal. Unfortunately, Genghis reacted badly to his medicines, and to make a long story short, I found a vet with expertise in heart conditions at a clinic much closer to me, and transferred my cats' files over to them. Genghis underwent an examination with one of the vets working there, and we scheduled a new echo with the clinic's owner. I was warned about several things that I needed to keep an eye out for, including asthma symptoms, which often go hand in hand with heart conditions.

As the vet rattled off what to look for as far as asthma went, I realized that she was describing Attila, not Genghis.

Sure enough, it wasn't long before Attila had his first attack. Then came the food allergies, and the revolving door at the veterinary clinic. People began to tell me that I should euthanize him, but I told them that he was a happy cat, and there was no way in hell I was going to kill him for no reason. Basically, they were told to mind their own business.

The years passed, and Genghis continued to defy the odds in one way, while Attila defied them in another way. Genghis must have been about thirteen or fourteen years old when an actual animal cardiologist began operating in the city. It was only then that I found out he'd been born with a rare condition, basically a hole in his heart, and that he should not have survived past four years of age. Well, he kept on chugging along until the spring of his sixteenth year, when his system began to fail. On the 5th of September 2014, I had to rush him to the clinic for the final time. His lungs were filling with water, his kidneys were shot, and his heart could no longer compensate for its defect. He died just a few months shy of his seventeenth birthday.

I had no time to grieve, because Attila began displaying strange symptoms. For the next three years, we battled a barrage of age-related conditions, and frequent mysterious coughing. I took him to the veterinary college, where they discovered something growing in his thorax region. His liver was also starting to go off the rails. In the spring of this year, he began losing weight. He went from a chubby 15-pounder to skin and bones. Then, this week, he developed jaundice. His time on this earth ended on Tuesday morning, 30 August 2017 - almost exactly three years after Genghis passed on. He was sixteen years old, just a few months away from his seventeenth birthday - just like Genghis.

The most amazing thing about this story is that, shortly after Attila came to live with me, Serena called to check up on how he was doing. It was then that she told me the person who had been also been interested in Attila had been another breeder, and that he had been pressuring her to sell the cat to him. Because she knew that some breeders didn't treat their cats very well, Serena had put him off again and again, secretly hoping someone else would come along - someone who wanted him as a pet, and not for breeding. Then, out of the blue, I'd called asking for a cat exactly like him. I honestly don't know what Serena attributed it to, but I will always know that it had Sultan's little paw-prints all over it.

Rest in peace, Sultan, Genghis and Attila.

All photos are my own