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Scratches, Tiger and Toby

By Taryn Wood

May 7, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST

To some, pets are family. To others, pets are merely roommates. My family and I consider our cats to be family. So when one got sick, we didn’t think twice about his medical care.
Such committed pet owners are a rare breed.
Both of my parents realized their love for cats early on and passed it along to my sister and me through observation, I assume. While growing up on a beach in Long Island, N.Y., my dad befriended the Russian blue cat, Pussywillow, on his walks to the bus stop. No matter the weather, Pussywillow followed the 9-year-old version of my dad and his twin brother for a mile to the main road and waited for them to board the bus. The boys arrived home each day to find Pussywillow hiding in a dense patch of reeds near the very same spot she left them — waiting for their walk home.
Pussywillow was mysteriously set free, according to my grandparents, but my dad suspects otherwise. He still cries when he talks about her.
My parents married in 1983, and a year later they found Scratches. Apparently no one wanted her; at a Detroit pet store, she was the lone kitten when my mom finally broke down and agreed to adopt her. At the time my mom was dancing in the touring cast of 42nd Street, and being on the road all the time didn’t exactly lend itself to cat ownership. My dad convinced her that a cat’s companionship would cure the sense of loneliness she occasionally felt.
My mom grew attached to Scratches even after I was born in 1987. They were so inseparable that when we put Scratches to sleep in 2001, a rash temporarily appeared on my mom’s neck where our cat used to sleep.
Having grown up hearing about Pussywillow and living in an unacknowledged (and not very equal) competition with Scratches for my mom’s attention, I also have a tendency to become attached to pets. I never loved Scratches quite as much as my mom did, but I still grieve her loss.
So when I happened to walk into a vet’s office in Chesterfield five years ago, the timing must have been just right. We weren’t looking for a new pet. My friend Lauren and I only stopped in for a few minutes, and we joked that my family should adopt another cat. But I didn’t think it would happen.
I brought my parents and sister, Taylor, back to the vet’s office the following week, and the cats still meowed at passersby. My sister and I pushed for the orange cats because they entertained us. One hung upside down from the top of the cage like a chimpanzee, and the other stared out of the cage longingly. The minute we took the soon-to-be-named Toby and Tiger out of their wire cage, my dad made the call: They were ours.
Although my mom hesitated and forced us to resort to the usual “We’ll take care of them by ourselves” promises, she finally agreed.
At first glance, Tiger and Toby look similar, and they appeared especially akin as
8-week-old kittens. But by the time we got them home, their differences became apparent. Tiger is darker and more striped, as well as more cautious, quiet and affectionate. Toby, the bolder of the pair, prides himself on his sense of adventure and occasional loud voice. Tiger developed a skittish nature later on, and Toby maintained his fearless attitude. Both are completely gorgeous, endlessly mischievous and loved way too much.
A few months before the brothers’ third birthday, on a typical Sunday, my mom left to teach a few hours of dance rehearsals. She returned to our Tudor-style home to find Tiger with a golf-ball-sized lump on his front right leg. It wasn’t there when she left that morning.
With Scratches, we went through a more typical pet owners’ experience — she was almost 17 years old, and her body simply broke down as a result of several medical reasons and old age. In order to avoid any pain or undue suffering, we made the decision to euthanize her.
Tiger was only three and seemed to be in perfect health, aside from a little overeating.
“I really thought with him being so young and healthy that it couldn’t possibly be anything serious,” my mom says. “I was a little concerned, and I didn’t hesitate in calling the vet the next morning. I was hoping they would say it was nothing, but when I said where it was, I think the vets knew what it was right away.”
The lump turned out to be a fibrosarcoma — a rare, aggressive type of malignant tumor that only affects one in 10,000 cats. We had Tiger’s surgically removed just two days after it appeared. This kind of turnaround time and early diagnosis is rare, but his vet, Dr. Douglas Pernikoff, still suggested we look into seeing an oncologist.
Strangely enough, one of the few radiation treatment centers for pets in St. Louis refused to take Tiger’s case. My mom called for a second opinion at The Cat Hospital in St. Louis, and they insisted that Tiger’s best chance would be to receive treatment at the MU College of Veterinary Medicine’s teaching hospital in Columbia.
A 100-mile drive with an already skittish cat was stressful, and our Honda Accord’s black leather interior felt the effects.
Our Valentine’s Day appointment at the veterinary hospital’s Small Animal Clinic was somber. My parents and I met with Jennifer Warnock, a surgical resident in the college, only to hear that she expected radiation to be the best option. If this were true, nervous Tiger would have to be housed for six to eight weeks in the cat ward of the hospital away from his home, away from his brother, and away from us.
Warnock admitted Tiger for diagnostic testing during the morning and left my parents and me to pass the time wandering The District like depressed zombies until we could return later that day. We didn’t really speak to one another.
The options in front of Tiger, a member of our family, were bad or worse: amputation of his leg or a lengthy round of radiation. It’s morbid to think that amputating our cat’s leg was what we hoped for.
The day seemed to last as long as it possibly could. We just waited to hear news we already knew was horrible.
After hours of silence and held-back tears, we returned to find out that Tiger and his particular cancer were both good candidates for amputation. This is a less common option, especially in dogs, but the alternative would have been virtually impossible and inhumane.
Warnock seemed to have prepared herself for our devastated reaction. But my parents and I all wept tears of joy, and she was pleasantly surprised. Tiger, as usual, cowered at the room’s volume. He survived, and three-legged he became.
During recovery, my mom started worrying about his sleep habits and limited mobility. A few days after he arrived home, she made a trip to Target and bought him a hunter-green sherpa dog bed to make him more comfortable. The two of them slept on it together.
One year after Tiger’s surgery, he runs just as fast as his four-legged counterpart, Toby. His jumping has improved also, but not as much as his appetite. He seems to lead the life of a normal cat in a family that probably loves him too much. Having passed the one-year mark that typically denotes a decreased chance of his cancer’s recurrence, we are hopeful that he’ll be cancer-free for life.

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