Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.
~Colette
In 2003, I casually mentioned to a friend that I wanted to rescue a black kitten from the pound. I’d heard that black cats and dogs were the last to be adopted because humans are silly and superstitious, and I tend to go for the underdog. Or, in this case, the “undercat.” So I wanted a black cat.
The very next day, a tiny, sick, black kitten showed up on that same friend’s patio. They couldn’t keep her, and while they said she looked like she was about to die, I agreed to take the little creature. The vet thought she was six weeks old when I first brought her in because she was so small. But her teeth revealed she was actually six months old and very malnourished. She’d had a rough start to life. I set about fattening her up and making her feel safe and loved.
She had obviously been roaming the Indiana countryside for quite some time. Along with practically starving to death, she’d clearly had a run-in with a sappy tree and a serious tangle with an angry skunk. She had a cleft lip as well, and the vet thought perhaps she’d been rejected by her mother. I called her Daisy because she was the opposite of a flower. She was a mess — a skinny, sticky, very stinky mess! And I gave her the middle name of Serendipity because of the timing of her arrival. I had wished for her, and there she was. Daisy Serendipity.
Seven years later, Daisy and I had moved to D.C. It was just the two of us. She was my roommate, confidante, and my best friend. And we were very in tune with each other. I joked that we were co-dependent.
I started having trouble with kidney stones early in college, but they passed relatively easily then. In D.C., the issue got more serious, and I landed in surgery. My doctor removed almost eighty stones from my right kidney. The surgery left me feeling pretty awful.
Four days after surgery, I went back to work. As the day wore on, I became convinced I had swine flu, which was in the news that year. The pain started from the top of my head, and as the hours passed, that pain and stiffness crept down my neck and shoulders to my back and hips. I finally gave up and went home for the afternoon.
I just wanted to sleep. I didn’t eat anything myself, but I fed Daisy before I climbed into bed with an ice pack at the back of my head. I fell into a deep sleep.
Hours later, Daisy woke me up by “push-pawing” on my cheek. I was accustomed to her pawing me, but this was different. It really hurt. When I groggily opened my eyes, I could see she was right in my face, nose-to-nose, her little mouth meowing like crazy. But I couldn’t hear a thing. Strange, I thought. I grabbed the remote to turn on the television. Nothing. I turned the volume way up. Nothing. I got worried.
I sat up quickly and very nearly passed out. I knew something was incredibly wrong. I called 9-1-1 and realized as I waited on the phone that I could not hear it ringing or hear if anyone answered. I took my best guess and said, “I hope there is someone on the other end of the line. Something is really wrong with me. I thought I had the flu, but I feel like I’m going to die. I can’t hear anything. I’m dizzy. I need help.” I stayed on the line for a minute and then hung up.
I looked at Daisy, who was pacing and still meowing — not her normal behavior at all. I grabbed her long-term feeder (the kind that lets food out as they eat), filled it to the top, and turned on the water faucet to a thin stream. I wasn’t sure how long I would be gone, but this felt like more than the flu, and I was worried about leaving her alone for days. Then I went to wait by the front door because I couldn’t hear anyone knock.
Luckily, an operator had heard me on that 9-1-1 call, and an ambulance arrived quickly. The EMTs and I communicated the best we could. I could talk to them; they motioned to me. They took my temperature and blood pressure. Then they looked at each other and helped me onto the stretcher. Their look said it all. I got really scared.
In the emergency room, I remember a lot of people moving around me at an alarmingly fast rate. I remember a nurse with a cute, brunette bob, whose main job was to comfort me. She held my hand and tried to communicate what was happening. As they got my blood pressure to rise, I was able to hear again. And the nurse’s face and voice were the only things that kept me from losing it. I heard some scary words. I saw some scary looks pass to and from medical team members. I remember a test in my wrist that was terribly painful. And then I woke up in the Intensive Care Unit two days later.
I had sepsis. It was, we believe, a result of the cleaning out of those stones in my kidney. My urologist visited me every day for my entire two weeks in the hospital. He felt pretty bad, but I didn’t blame him. Things happen. The ER doctor visited me, too. And he said the team couldn’t figure out how in the world I’d woken up at all to be able to call 9-1-1. My blood pressure when I arrived had been lower than 55/40. I should have died in my sleep.
“My cat,” I said, smiling. “She woke me up.”
“You probably stopped breathing a number of times and freaked her out,” said the doctor. “Serendipitous. She’s a hero.”
Indeed, she is. And the fact that her full name is Daisy Serendipity was not lost on me.
~Kristin Ingersoll
