Introduction
We have four cats. One is the mother of the twins above, the fourth a rescued black tom called Nokoribi. We’ve known the twins since birth, so, perhaps more than Firefly (mother) and Nokoribi, they feel like our own children to us. Caring for living beings, providing them with everything they need to survive and thrive, is a sacred and daunting duty. When it comes to caring for non-human animals, one is often obliged to do things to them they most definitely would rather did not happen. What is in your heart when you grievously intervene to curtail another’s free will is very important to how those interventions are experienced by those you care for, and thus how they recover.
This is a true musing about lockdowns, medical interventions and what quality of care might bring them about.
Too many cats!
We have four cats. The small street we live on is home to about 10, and neighbouring streets are home to many more. So there are lots of cats around these parts, and all across the UK; we don’t need them breeding like flies, to put it crudely. When their time was due, we had the twins – boys both – neutered. Ashitaka’s operation ran smoothly. Kashmir’s followed a rather different course.
The vet’s fondling informed her that only one of Kashmir’s testicles had descended. Bring him back in six weeks, she said, and we’ll take another look. Six weeks later, his second testicle was still nowhere to be found. The more expensive, hunt-the-ball operation would begin that very morning, but first a few questions. How was his most recent stool? Soft, I replied, mousse-like. Ah … well … better not operate, just in case. Reschedule, please. So we drove Kashmir home, unscathed, for a second time.
He must have wondered why, randomly, we took him to see an odd-smelling woman who fondled his scrotum, only to drive him back home again. Twice.
10 days later, though, the fondling was finally followed by an operation.
When we collected him, the vet seemed a little discombobulated. She wasn’t sure if she had found the second testicle. She had sent a sample to the lab and would find out within two weeks if it was indeed testicular matter she had cut out. We would not be charged for a subsequent operation if such were needed.
Unnerved, we drove poor Kashmir home.
Still heavily sedated, he was in no pain. Back in his familiar environment, as soon as I opened the door of his carry-cage, he bolted out and ran up the stairs. He was by turns exuberantly playful and excessively affectionate, behaviour we had seen before, after Firefly’s spaying, while she was still sedated.
When we saw his wounds, we were alarmed.
Of course he was trying to clean them. We did not want to cone him, as both his brother and mother had reacted wildly when coned after their operations, and we figured he would react similarly. We let them deal with their situation cone-free. After gentle correcting, both learned to leave their wounds alone. We felt it safer to take the same approach with Kashmir.
But the larger of his three scars, right down the middle of his belly and about three inches long, started pumping out a clear, pinkish liquid we later learned was plasma. It was horrible to watch. Had he been properly stitched up? Was it a botched operation? When we then coned him, he thrashed and writhed, causing more plasma to pump out. He left pools of it wherever he stopped. So we removed the cone again and resolved to be by his side, in shifts, to gently stop him licking his wound, until it had properly closed.
This did not work. The leaking plasma matted his fur, which he desperately wanted to clean. This made it very hard to police his cleaning effectively, to make sure he was not cleaning and worrying his wounds. The hours crawled by but the wound would not close. And he was too playful, active, insistent … uncontrollable. We had enjoyed success with this policing strategy with Nokoribi after a cat-fight wound had become an abscess. Not so with Kashmir.
Finally, though not trusting the competence of the veterinary surgery much at all, we called up and asked for advice. We were told not to worry, that weeping wounds were not uncommon, that we really had to cone Kashmir and wait out his thrashing and writhing. We followed these instructions and, after about 20 minutes, he accepted the cone and settled down somewhat.
But his wound would not stop weeping, even through the next day. In no pain, he was still too physical, we thought.
To kill pain, or not to kill pain, that is the question
Pain is information, feedback from our body about how to behave, what precautions to take. Sedated, Kashmir behaved far too recklessly – it seemed to us – for his wound to heal. We had been given fairly potent painkillers we were to administer 24 hours after the operation, then repeatedly in 24-hour intervals until they ran out. We discussed whether to use Kashmir’s pain to control his behaviours for his long-term benefit instead, and decided this was, on balance, the wiser course.
Next day, coned and miserable, his pain made its presence felt. He hunkered on the blanket we had prepared for him and slept, rousing only when thirst or hunger became too strong to ignore. Coned throughout, in serious pain, we brought water and food to him. He was with us in bed for days. We surrounded him with love, and it was clear to us our love, our deep care, gently eased its way through his balled defensiveness.
The wound stopped weeping. Every opportunity we had to inspect his wounds told us he was healing beautifully. It was a very moving experience, though one shot through with concern.
Our three-way bond grew deeper. Kashmir knew, as all non-human animals know, that we meant him no harm, that our emanations were loving, that he was being bathed in love from morning to night and back around again. But we don’t want to put him through another operation again. The results from the lab were inconclusive: Whatever it was that the vet had partially cut out of Kashmir, it was not testicular. In Germany, vets use an ultrasound device to locate the undescended testicle before operating. Not so here in the UK. So not only was the operation three times more expensive than it would have been had both testicles descended, it was an ugly failure.
Our experience with the medical profession, especially after lockdowns and ‘vaccine’ mandates, after being on the receiving end of its opprobrium and icy disdain for daring to disagree with its assessments, has been badly negative more often than not. This includes an almost fatal mishandling of my wife’s hyperactive thyroid that went undiagnosed throughout an entire pregnancy, and the non-diagnosis and arrogant disinterest in my own extreme shoulder pain, which turned out to be a very bad case of frozen shoulder and bursitis. There are good doctors of course, but one has to find them. It is worse in the UK than in Germany, and I can’t speak for other countries, but our experience has distanced us from the medical profession. Our trust in it has been cut to the bone.
Watching Kashmir manage his healing as guided by his pain was, as said, a beautiful thing, though also fraught. I dealt with my own potentially deadly illness, possibly c19, which I think became pneumonia, without any help at all from any doctor or hospital. I allowed my body’s communications to guide me. I stayed calm throughout. People who care about me were around me. I made a full recovery. Perhaps this was reckless of me, but my personal conviction is that we moderns are too afraid of pain, and of death. There is most certainly a place for the wonder of modern pain-management drugs – I would never argue otherwise – but who can put their hand on their heart and say we have not coddled ourselves too much?
Wisdom is the doctor
The body knows. When we freak out, our body cannot be heard. Any kind of hysteria is a wildfire-malfunctioning that burns all useful information to ash. The more we are exposed to learning how to handle our pains and illnesses, the wiser we become, the more seriously we take risks to our health, and the more confidence we have in what the body can do. Health-for-profit is bound by its own economic logic to interrupt this, to intervene, to exploit.
Specialisation makes wisdom seem remote from us; we outsource most of what we could do ourselves to others. If we perceive this dynamic as counter to our interests, we can choose to learn how to help ourselves where possible. While I do not advise anyone on their own health concerns, I do humbly suggest my reasoning here is generally warranted. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, goes the saying. Wise prevention and wise self-management harm health-industry profits.
Imagine a world without junk food, imagine populations everywhere thriving from meaningful contributions to their communities. Imagine a world of healthy soil, water and air, of social governance structured by transparent knowledge accessible to all, a world in which the bling and glitter of consumerism were a distant memory. What kind of health industry would fit such a world? One very different to the one we have.
It is its very difference, so easy to picture in broad brushstrokes, that is so redolent of what ails us today.
Fear does not foster health. I did not feel the interventions of lockdowns and mask and ‘vaccine’ mandates during the ‘pandemic’ to be healthful, or loving. Corona measures were both fear inducing and induced, and thus as far from wisdom as it is possible to be. Kashmir knew my wife and I were wholly concerned with his wellbeing as we locked him down and coned him. Sometimes these things must be done. But I know management of whatever c19 is/was was not similarly intentioned. It felt sinister from the start: totalitarian, designed to herd people into something … into more obedience and away from wisdom and love. Towards more fear. And now 15 minute cities feel the same, like a continuation of sinister intent.
Am I allowed to ask whether global warming is a bad thing? Is there truly such a thing as “runaway” global warming? Or is the fear too great to permit disagreement, to admit discussion. Why is “anti-vaxxer” a pejorative? When I try to discuss such things, I am told there is only one side: Science. “If you question me, quite frankly, you question the science.” I cannot imagine a more religious, or more chilling, statement.
In what kind of system are we living when there is only one side?
In fear, it is as if our fear is the only thing keeping us alive. Those who question our behaviours and beliefs are thus dangerous fools. We need our precious fear to make it through! But all emotions feel justified. Indeed, while felt, all emotions must be justified – i.e. have a cause –; otherwise they wouldn’t occur. Earned wisdom penetrates this sense that an emotion triggered by an issue is somehow The Truth of that issue.
It is utterly non-controversial that fear is bad for health. Why were/are we kept in fear, why do we seem to want to remain afraid? I look around me and see no imminent danger, but almost everyone seems existentially afraid. Why? This state of affairs hasn’t materialised out of nowhere, uncaused.
Kashmir is not afraid of me. He knows I love him and want what’s best for him. He trusts me totally. Being forced or finessed via a generalised Stockholm-Syndrome into ‘trusting’ authority has very different psychological colours. You can feel (not emote) the difference between genuinely earned trust, and ‘trust’ forced upon you by whomever, just as you can feel the difference between an imagined health-care system rooted in wisdom and love, and one rooted in the profit motive.
This, for me, is the lesson of the pain of this historical moment. This, for me, is the cultural wisdom these horribly interesting times can yield.
Will yield; as the pressure mounts, our hunger for something wiser, something truly organic, is becoming irresistible.