by Susan Finden
I’d worked in healthcare for years and I think I would have known what to say to someone else, but this was Chris. He was the man who had changed my life, who had made me happy and allowed me to be the person I had always wanted to be. He had seen me through my own health scares and had always been such a good person. Maybe everyone starts to think how unfair things are, and, of course, no one deserves cancer, but what had Chris ever done to harm anyone? We had been through so much over the years that it seemed an act of unspeakable cruelty to throw this at us too.
We had never considered cancer a possibility. We had come to hospital that day to find out about kidney stones. It turned out that when Chris had seen the GP (only the day before but it felt like a lifetime ago), his spleen had been three times the size it should have been, which is one of the first signs of this type of cancer. His white cell count was reading 150 when it should have been 5. If he hadn’t gone to the doctor when he did, he would have been dead within six months. Now he had a fighting chance, but it would be far from plain sailing.
It was a terrible time. Chris had to get a bone marrow biopsy, which was a horrible process, a bone marrow harvest, constant blood tests. In fact, he had five bone marrow tests in one year. Initially he didn’t respond to any of the chemotherapy treatment or injections, and his consultant sent him to a specialist in Hammersmith to look at the options. Things seemed very bleak but this man offered us one glimmer of hope. There was a course of treatment with a new drug that had been producing marvellous results in the US. However, it wasn’t on the list of accepted medicines in this country. We were sent home with the information about it, aware that the consultant believed that this was really Chris’s only option. If he couldn’t get access to the drug, there was very little else that could be done.
Chris went back to his own consultant, who said that it was very unlikely that the local health authority would authorize a prescription. The drug cost over £17,000 a year and the budget simply wouldn’t allow for it. I was furious but what could we do? ‘Move to Scotland,’ he said. ‘They give it out like sweets up there. In the meantime, I’ll write to the health authority and see what they say, but I really think there’s very little chance. I’m so sorry.’
When Chris and I went home that night, it was difficult to be optimistic. His future was in the hands of faceless bureaucrats who would look at their balance sheets rather than the human cost of not authorizing the drug we now felt to be our only hope. I clung to what the doctor had said. I had no aversion to moving house; I’d done it plenty of times before, and this time it would be for a better reason than itchy feet. ‘Why don’t we move to Scotland?’ I said to Chris. He had worked there many times and liked it, and I would do anything to increase his chances of surviving. We discussed it well into the night, and I would have been quite happy to start packing the next day, but Chris is more pragmatic and suggested we wait to see what the health authority said; perhaps they would surprise everyone.
They didn’t. They refused the application.
The consultant was furious. He had done more research by this time and concurred completely with the Hammersmith doctor that this drug would give Chris the best chance. He went back to the health authority many times, pleading the case, making strong arguments, but they were difficult. In the end, he wrote the prescription anyway.
It was a miracle drug. Chris was in remission within a year and his case persuaded the authority to prescribe it much more freely when they saw the results. I was still so angry though. It infuriated me that my husband’s health, his life, had been considered to be worth so little. If that drug had never been prescribed, he wouldn’t be here today nor would all the other people who were given it as a result of his test case.
While Chris was terribly ill, the cats sensed something was going on. They became very gentle and watchful with him, and there always seemed to be one of our furry boys or girls sitting beside him when he was too weak to move or too sick from the treatment to get off the chair. While humans sometimes feel awkward or useless in the face of serious illness and the possibility of death, animals seem to take it in their stride, offering love and comfort in a simple way that does so much to help.
Ginny used to curl up beside him no matter how ill Chris was. She gave him such love, and even used to bring him presents of worms and baby frogs. There was never a mark on them, even though she used to carry them home in her mouth. She would deposit them in front of Chris as if she needed to give him something. Cats seem to need to do things for us just as we need to do things for them.
As Chris gradually got better, I felt that we had escaped. Perhaps now we could settle into a normal life, free of worry and concern. Casper’s adventures brought joy to our days, and he managed, in some part, to tackle and negate the terrible negativity that I’d previously felt about humanity.
CHAPTER 24
Casper’s Passing
It was 8.45a.m. on 14 January 2010 when I got the knock at my door that I’d always dreaded.
I was halfway through getting dressed when I heard the noise. It could have been anyone, I suppose – a delivery, some early post, a neighbour. But I knew I just knew, as I walked down the stairs, that as soon as I opened the door, the rug would be pulled out from under me. Do we have some sort of sixth sense when bad things, awful things, are about to affect our lives? Not always – there can be a phone call in the middle of the night that we never expected or a letter that contains information that will change our lives, and they are bolts from the blue. However, I’ve always had feelings about things – premonitions and senses. On this day I desperately wanted to be wrong, but a sense of foreboding warned me against opening the door, told me not to listen to whatever the person on the other side had to say. Sadly, I had no choice. I had to open the door.
Waiting for me on the other side was a lady I vaguely knew. She lived in the same street and I often saw her walking past with her little girl. We had said ‘hello’ and exchanged a few words about Casper from time to time, and she was always friendly and interested in what he was up to. That day she was as white as a ghost and shaking.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure how to tell you this but . . . it’s Casper. He’s been hit.’
I listened to the words but they were no surprise to me. Since the moment I’d heard the doorbell, I’d known this was it. This was the moment when all my worst nightmares were about to come true. I felt as if the woman’s voice was coming through a tunnel as she continued to tell me what had happened. It came to me in fragments . . .
There was a car . . . a taxi . . .
Going too fast . . . speeding ...
If he had crossed the road a moment earlier or a moment later . . . he didn’t stand a chance . . .
I heard a bang . . . Casper ... Casper . . .
The woman said that she’d been walking along Poole Park Road when she was aware of a vehicle driving up behind her. She heard a bang so loud that she’d turned around. She realized that the private hire taxi was driving along at such a rate that she needed to push her little girl off the pavement onto a grass verge, as she thought the car might hit the toddler. The taxi sped past, not slowing down in the slightest. She checked that her child was all right, then looked back again to see what had caused the bang.
It was Casper.
She had heard Casper being hit.
I grabbed a coat to put over my nightdress, vaguely aware that she was still talking. ‘He was hit,’ she said, ‘but he’s still alive. I saw him crawl across the road, Sue. Maybe he’s OK?’ There was desperation in her voice and panic in my heart. I raced out the door, past the woman who was still standing there with her little girl, both of them quiet, both of them waiting to see whether Casper was safe.
The woman called, ‘I think he’s under a parked car,’ just as I realized the same thing myself. He was. Casper was there! In a neighbour’s driveway, under their car, he was hiding. Shivering and terrified, I scooped him up in my arms and hurried bac
k inside. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered to the woman as I went in.
Casper was alive but only just.
My darling cat wasn’t making any noise. I laid him on the sofa with a blanket over him as I flew upstairs to grab some clothes. I needed to get him to the vet immediately. As I put on the first things I could find, I tried to put the image of Casper out of my mind and focus on the fact that he was here with me, and I would do everything in my power to save him I’d never let that dear cat out of my sight again. I’d lock doors, seal windows; I’d move a hundred miles away into the heart of the country if I needed to. I made all of these promises in my head, but it was a desperate ploy to try to block out the image I’d had when I picked him up. His back end had been swinging as if he had no control over it whatsoever and I feared with every part of my body and soul that his back had been broken. Vets can do wonders, I muttered. Vets can work miracles. I knew time was against me and I needed to get a taxi, get to the vet, get things in motion to try to reverse the awful thing that had just happened.
I was away from Cassie for less than a minute, but somehow, in my absence and despite his horrific injuries, he had managed to get off the sofa and was now lying by the door.
Everything seemed to slow down.
I’d been in such a rush, such a panic, but now I felt as if the clocks had stopped. My wonderful Casper was taking his last breaths. I just knew it. I needed no medical expertise, no veterinary education. This was it. This was the end.
I lay down on the floor beside him and stroked him constantly. I don’t know whether he was conscious or not, but I needed to whisper words of comfort for both of us.
What did I say? I don’t know.
What did I feel? During those final moments, I’m not sure.
Together, in love, I held my boy as he left this world.
The pain was almost unbearable, but not being there with Casper as he breathed his last would have been more than I could have endured. I was honoured to be there, even if my heart was breaking. And it was. It truly was.
CHAPTER 25
The Hardest Days
I had to do something. There was no doubt in my mind that Cassie had gone, but there were still things that I had to do for him I didn’t want to see him lying on the floor, shattered and empty, a shadow of the wonderful cat he had been. I knew that I had to get him to the vet, where he would be treated with dignity.
I picked up my gorgeous cat and wrapped him in a blanket. My hands seemed to belong to someone else and I fumbled desperately as I tried to swaddle him. It was important to me that he was treated with love and care from this moment on, and I tried to be so gentle with his poor broken shell.
I knew that the vet’s phone line had been broken for almost a week and time was against me. They closed at 10a.m., which meant I had only fifteen minutes to get there. I rang the animal hospital on the other side of Plymouth and asked if they could call my vet, tell them that Casper had been hit and that I needed to bring him in. I had a horrible feeling that if they didn’t know in advance, I’d be faced with locked doors when I arrived.
By the time I got there, it was after ten, but they were waiting for me. The receptionist was very fond of Cassie, and had read about him in the newspapers, so she was terribly upset. The rest of that visit is a bit of a blur. I knew he was dead; I didn’t need anyone to confirm it for me. Perhaps I just had to do something to make it real. By going to the vet, I was completing my commitment to Casper by ensuring that, until his last moment, he would be cared for. Maybe I also needed to say the words out loud – Casper is dead.
There were no more words to say to Casper. I kissed him and sent him all my love and then I left him I didn’t turn back; I didn’t run to his side a hundred times. He was gone. He wasn’t Cassie any more, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Chris had been away since just after Christmas, but was due home that night. I called him, in floods of tears, to let him know what had happened, and felt that I had to hold on until he got back. I spent the rest of the morning crying, and that was how it should be. Carrying on as if nothing had happened, going about life as if it wasn’t the darkest of days – how could I have pretended?
A picture of what had happened to Casper kept emerging through the tears. The lady with the toddler told me that the bang was so loud she’d heard it clearly and turned around in fear. The driver must have heard it too; he must have felt it. Why didn’t he stop? He must have known that he’d hit something. Didn’t he care? What if he thought nothing had happened and he continued to drive like that? What if next time it was a child?
Despite my grief, I could not, in all conscience, allow this to go unchallenged. I rang the police and told them what had happened. They informed me that there is no legal requirement for a driver to stop if they hit a cat, whereas with a dog they must do so. This seemed terribly unfair to me, but I expressed my concern that the driver was unsafe and that he could cause injury or worse if allowed to go unchecked. The policewoman was sympathetic but said there was nothing that could be done – dangerous driving required two witnesses and it would have to be those witnesses who made the complaint.
I lay down, my head full of the injustice of it all, my heart heavy with loss. I felt so alone. Then, as if someone had sent me a message, I realized that I was not alone. People cared. People loved Casper. They needed to know that he was gone, and I had a duty to tell them. My first call was to Edd at the Plymouth Herald. The words were so difficult to say, but the fact that he was shocked, sympathetic and emotional about it too made me realize this was the right decision. Casper had spent so long in the public eye that those who had rejoiced in his adventures had a right to know what had happened. I realized at that moment that Casper didn’t just belong to me, he belonged to everyone.
Edd’s immediate response was to tell me that he would put something in the paper as soon as possible to inform readers. I knew there was also someone else I had to contact immediately – Rob. By this time of day, the bus drivers on the number three would be starting to look for Casper, wondering whether he’d be in the bus shelter yet or taking their route that day. It made me terribly sad to think that they, too, were ignorant of what had happened and that they would never see him again.
With a shaking hand and a lump in my throat, I rang Rob. ‘Hi Sue,’ he said, cheery as always, ‘what can I do for you today?’ The story poured out of me, as I asked him to tell Karen and the others. I could tell that he was in shock too, but he was practical and said he would let everyone know He urged me to take care of myself.
I settled back onto the sofa, without a clue as to what I should do next. I’d called the people who had been most involved in Casper’s public world. As I lay there, I knew that they would be telling others, while I faced the reality of life without him on my own.
The house was empty of Casper but today he wasn’t wandering, he wasn’t waiting on the bus, he wasn’t sitting under the hedge, watching dogs. He was gone and there was nothing I could do to bring him back. Every time I felt my mind wander, I tried to stop it. There was no benefit in thinking about how he’d looked when I picked him up from under the car, or lain him on the sofa, or saw him at the door, or left him with the vet. That was in the past and I would only hurt more if I dwelt on it.
As I sat there, alone and lost, I had no idea that the news of Casper’s death had had an immediate impact. Rob had put up a notice in the bus depot. It echoed those from earlier times, but today it contained a much sadder message.
CASPER THE CAT HAS DIED
I HAVE THIS MORNING BEEN MADE AWARE OF
THE SAD NEWS THAT CASPER THE CAT HAS
DIED. A CAR HIT HIM AND, UNFORTUNATELY,
BY THE TIME HIS OWNER GOT TO HIM
HIS INJURIES WERE NOT SURVIVABLE. HIS
OWNER, SUE, HAS ASKED ME TO PASS ON HER
HEARTFELT THANKS TO ALL OF THOSE WHO
LOOKED AFTER HIM WHEN ON THE BUS AND
EVERYONE WHO HAS ASKED AFTER HIM.
>
MANY THANKS – ROB
One driver, Jo, later told me that there was complete shock in the depot. People had got so used to Casper and his funny little ways; they considered him one of their own, and now he was gone. It was, of course, something that we’d all worried about ever since we’d found out about his habit of crossing the road and wandering about. As time had gone on, perhaps some of his friends had thought he was a remarkable cat in more ways than one; maybe he would avoid the inevitable and survive the traffic. I must confess that I’d never thought this way; I’d always worried, I’d always thought this day would come.
The hours passed slowly until Chris came home. I heard the car pull up outside and knew what he would be feeling – the absolute emptiness that Casper was not there to run to him. I fell into his arms with all the sadness of the day’s events pouring out of me. It felt so real. It felt so final.
CHAPTER 26
RIP Casper
Edd was true to his word. Within a few days, the story of Casper’s death was in the Plymouth Herald.
Celebrity cat killed in hit and run
A much-loved Barne Barton cat who made headlines around the world has died after being hit by a car.
Casper the commuting cat fast became a celebrity on Plymouth buses when he used to politely queue with the other passengers, before hopping aboard to travel around the city.
His owner says she’s devastated and doubts she’ll ever have a cat like Casper again.
Sue Finden said: ‘I never dreamt I’d miss an animal as much as I miss him. He was lovely and loved people so much – he was such a different character.’