Darth Vader Cat.

If you've been following this blog for a while, you know that we have the privilege to be door-openers and can-openers for a little (though really not so little) cat. Things that you might not know about said little cat:

She came to live with us in 2012, when we fetched her out of an animal shelter. She'd been found, as her previous owners had set her out in the midst of winter, so her history is unknown. The shelter gave her a name (Madonna), sterilised her, had her chipped and her ears tattooed (these are standard shelter procedures in Germany, to help identify an animal if it gets lost), and gave her a general health checkup. She never felt at home living with other cats, and from what we gleaned from her behaviour, she was probably all on her own, and she definitely had no possibility to go outside in her former home.

After she'd been with us a bit, we realised she had weird coughing fits. A bit like coughing up a hairball, but never with any hair coming out... so we did a bit of research, and then we went to the vet, and we were told that yes, she has feline asthma. So we did some more research, and we found out that there's several ways to treat the asthma: Depot cortisone injections, cortisone pills, or inhaling cortisone with a special inhaler. The two first methods are systemic treatment, and daily doses of cortisone are, unfortunately, not without side effects. Inhaling, in contrast, puts the drug only there where it's needed: into the lungs.

So we got an inhaler, and cortisone spray, and started the rather long and tedious process of getting the cat used to inhaling. (She got pills during that time. That was even less fun than the inhaling training.) It took about three months, and it is daily ritual since, morning and evening. Usually, it's a very quick procedure - she gets a "bribe" treat, lies down, inhales, gets some more treats, we wipe her nose, even more treats (they are small ones), and then she's getting her food, or we open the door so she can go out and do Important Cat Things.

This process has fascinated quite a few people in our acquaintance, so in case you are curious now as well, here's a video of me doing the inhalation stuff with Madonna. The colours are a bit flat, but everything should be visible enough...