Some of you might of heard of her elsewhere, the feisty little madam who has been through so much. She has gone on much longer than we all thought she would.
Tuppence originally appeared outside the back of the surgery as a feral cat around 10 years ago. She wasn't young then, and nobody knows where she came from. Within time she became accustomed to the staff, and bit by bit moved from her custom made cat-house in the backyard into the warm laundryroom, where she would sit in the cupbord full of towels, semi hidden and waiting for a guliible hand to reach in for a towel and - whack! - she got everybody more than once!
She mellowed a lot with age and slowly over a process of months, moved her way through the surgery and up to the staff rooms upstairs around 3 years ago, getting used to home comforts. And there she stayed.
She went through a lot in her last years - she became hyperthyroid and not being the easiest cat in the world to medicate, she underwent surgery to remove her thyroid glands. After that, she developed skin cancer resulting in surgery to remove her ear tips. She looked like a little mouse with her tiny rounded ears. Soon after she developed chronic renal failure.
It has been touch and go for Tupps for the past 18 months - last August we thought we had lost her - but she kept frightening us all then bouncing back to teach us all a lesson - don't doubt Tuppence! She did require the odd night on a drip now and again, but was doing okay.
The past 3-4 weeks, Tuppence has been really unwell - she suffered terribly in our heatwave and became increasingly weak and sick. The past 3 days she has hardly moved or eaten, and on Thursday we put her on a drip again. We all decided it would be her last drip. Yesterday, she was just as bad, if not worse, despite the drip the night before.
Yesterday at 4pm, aged around 19 years, Tuppence was put to sleep. She did not utter a sound of protest - something which, for Tuppence, is a sure sign we did the right thing. It was terribly upsetting, I have spent a lot of the afternoon in tears.
Tuppence was a real character until the end... a feisty eccentric old lady with so much personality. You could be getting purrs and headrubs one minute, and the next she would grab your hand and bite you! She knew when you were coming with medication, and was foul-mouthed about it all! She demanded a portion of everybody's dinner in HER staffroom - if you ate it in there, it belonged to her. And if you didn't share, she would either bite you, knock it on to the floor, or simply take it off you! A tiger in a 2kg body!
Always loved and forever missed, good night Tuppence.
