Meet Polly - the newest cat at Eco-Gites of Lenault

We have a new cat. Friends are going back to live in England soon but will not be able to take their cat so she has come to live with us. Meet Polly and read on to learn about her rather bumpy journey to get here which may have involved losing some of her 9 lives.

I first brought Polly over to the gite in July but after a short period of time she up-sticks and left. I kept going back to her old house in the hope she has headed back there but there was no sign of her. I was so upset but always knew it might be hard to relocate a 10 year old outdoor cat to a new home.  Then, about 6 weeks after she left we spotted her at some buildings only about 500m from us. She looked in great health and was obviously hunting well but she would not come anywhere near us.  Over the following weeks I saw her from time to time, often hunting along the edge of the fields and I decided if she was not going to live with us (and she could not live with the new owners of our friends) then this was the next best option.

But I was wrong.

One day I was driving home and, for reasons I don't know, as I drove past the buildings where I had seen her I slowed right down and looked up the track. That was when I saw Polly lying on the verge. I jumped out of the car and she didn't move so my immediate thought was that she had been hit.  She was incredibly thin and very weak but did not appear to be in any pain so I decided she had not been hit.  I took her home, thinking that she must have not been hunting as well as I thought but then we noticed that as well as being so thin and weak she was severely anaemic (white gums) - a classic sign of rat poisoning.

I rang the vet and she was able to see us within half an hour and confirmed that Polly had indeed been poisoned but quickly assured me that with treatment cats can make a full recovery, even those as poorly as Polly. She only weighed 1.1kgs and was so thin the vet has trouble finding a vein to take a blood sample (she had to take it from her jugular). After an injection of Vitamin K we were sent us home together with a month's worth of Vit K tablets and instructions to feed her 5 small meals a day.  The vet was right and over time Polly put on weight and stopped falling over every time she went up or down any steps.

But that's not the end of the story as a couple of weeks later we could see she was getting desperate to go outside but we wanted to keep her in until she had finished all her tablets.  Polly, however, had other ideas and with her new found strength she managed to escape the day before we were due to go away for a week ... and headed straight off towards the buildings where she had been poisoned.  I was heartbroken as all I could think was that this was a death sentence for her.  However scroll forward 2 days and we got a phone call from younger son who was house sitting for us and she had come back. She must have realised that a ready supply of meat and biscuits, comfy chairs and warm fires to sit in front of were eminently better than a barn with (poisoned) rodents that had to be caught.

She is now an indoor and outdoor cat.  The two outdoor cats (Fumée and Firkin) have accepted her and Moo, our other house cat, who detests Fumée, is tolerating having Polly in the house. Now all we have to remember is that not only is Polly a great hunter, she is also a terrible thief.  Thankfully a phone call to the vet assured me that Christmas cake is not toxic to cats although we won't talk about the litter tray the day after she decided to reshape our cake. Thanks Polly!

Do you  have cats? I'd love to hear about them in a comment.