A Tale About a Tail!

During late Spring & Summer of 2008. Anyone who has attended the AGM or a show where there has been a Somali Table will be familiar with Gypsy.

Once accustomed to her new surroundings, Gypsy became increasingly confident Di sorted the bowel problems by judicial administration of tuna in oil but we were still very doubtful of success with what can be a very intractable problem there was no way of knowing whether the damage she had sustained to the bladder was just severe bruising or whether nerves had been harmed irretrievably. After several visits to the vet, a plan was made to watch & care for Gypsy in the hopes that she would regain some control & her tail could be amputated slightly lower down rather than right at the base. By June, she had full bladder function & the operation was carried out successfully. She was moved to a pen where she could see everything going on & she made a complete recovery from the operation & her scut of tail started to grow new fur.

We had all become so involved with & attached to Gypsy that when the time came to find a new home, it had to be perfect without any input from her original owner, we knew there had to be no mistakes. It was obvious that this was a cat who would be desperately unhappy if she was contained she really needed her freedom, but safely! I have been dealing with rehoming for many years & it is quite uncanny how the right person for the right cat turns up time after time. I had been talking to a couple who were about to move to an old house they had been refurbishing it was an ideal country situation backing onto farmland, they had no other cats & were very keen to have Gypsy they seemed heaven sent. They collected her from Di in mid August and as is the way with Somalis, she took them over completely. She lives in rural bliss, with a flock of chickens for company of whom she is apparently very fond (though she treats the cockerel with due respect), delivers a constant stream of small rodents for her people to play with & rules the roost. She is very talkative & no one is ever in any doubt when she needs food which is often has full run of the house & her freedom during the day. To quote her new owners Gypsy has been such a wonderful addition to our lives.

So to all of you who contributed so generously to Gypsys care, financially & in kind, thank you! She deserved it!

UPDATE – October 2017
Gypsy has now been back with us in the Rescue pen for nearly a year – two small children and a house move to a neighbourhood with many other cats proved too much for her to cope with so she was returned to Di. As she has aged, her bowel control has become increasingly unreliable so we decided it was best not to attempt to re-home her again but to let her live out her days in the Maund Bryant pen at Brizlincoat Farm, surrounded by her favourite chickens and given the very best love and care.

Photo's by kind permission of J Sharples

Written by Somali Cat Club on {{ "2011-11-10T15:27:00+00:00" | date "longDate" }}