She slowly began to turn around. The respiratory infection cleared up. She relaxed into her first indoor home and began to welcome my affections. As happens in rescue, it’s nearly impossible to keep an emotional distance from the beautiful beings you’ve taken in. I would look at her sweet face and get tearful, knowing I would have her for such a short time. To deal with the reality of her impending death, I began\u00a0to talk to her with an affectionate, matter-of-fact tone.<\/p>\n
“Good morning,” I would say, kissing her head, “Dying girl.”<\/p>\n
The “few weeks” of expected lifespan turned into months, and finally years. She still drooled and had trouble eating, but as time went by, even these issues seemed to lessen. And when I saw her playing, I finally had to investigate.<\/p>\n
Soon afterward I was at my vet for a prescription, and took along Ginger’s biopsy from 2.3 years ago. I asked her how many cats she’d heard of with squamous cell mouth cancer who had lived this long. “Zero,” she told me, then examined the biopsy. Mystified, she offered to redo it.<\/p>\n
It took me a few weeks to get my sweet little hellcat into a carrier (she was NOT having it) and off to the vet, but I finally managed – ironically on Good Friday. When Ginger was finally sedated, and Dr. Lawson looked in her mouth, here’s what she saw: nothing. Not a smaller tumor, no tumor<\/em>. She did, she noted, having terrible teeth, four of which need to be pulled because they were infected. This would explain the drooling. As for why the growth in her mouth went away, she could not offer an explanation.<\/p>\n It’s possible, she said, that since the body is supposed to combat cancer cells, and Ginger was so sick and starving when I took her in, her body was incapable of fighting it. But as she regained her general health, perhaps her body was then more able to conquer the cancer? “I’m sure love and good food helped,” she smiled.<\/p>\n Emphasis, perhaps, on love? We’ve heard that it “conquers all,” but now I’ve seen with my own eyes that it can also create small wonders “not explicable by natural or\u00a0scientific\u00a0laws.”<\/p>\n Thank you, St. Francis, for guiding\u00a0me on this little adventure.<\/p>\n I now have to change my thinking about Ginger’s future. My pity and compassion that she is dying has shifted to the reality that this cranky, adorable senior citizen who cuts such a swath in my home will be with me for a while. To help wrap my brain around it, I now\u00a0greet her in the morning with a new salutation.<\/p>\n “Good morning,” I say, kissing her head, “miracle girl.”<\/p>\n Despite the dedication of this blog to St. Francis, I am not, nor have I ever been, a religious person. (With the possible exception of when I belted “Jesus loves me, this I know” in the youth choir at church. … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/FullSizeRender.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"