Casper The Commuting Cat: The True Story Of The Cat Who Rode The Bus And Stole Our Hearts

I knew from experience that cats can be a great source of comfort in times of need. The year before we got Casper, Chris had been feeling very unwell and we were pretty sure that he had kidney stones. He went to the doctor for some confirmation blood tests one morning before going to work. The results came through that evening, such was the urgency of what had been uncovered.

He was told to get home immediately and be at the haematology department of our local hospital the next afternoon. I couldn’t understand why he would be sent there for kidney stones. We drove to the hospital in a haze. We were both pretty sure what was going on, as all of Chris’s symptoms pointed to the diagnosis we felt sure he was going to receive. As soon as we arrived, he was taken in to the specialist, who didn’t waste any time in telling us what was wrong.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘there’s no easy way to tell you this. You have leukaemia.’

When she spoke those words, I turned around and looked at the wall behind me. Who was she talking to, I wondered? It couldn’t be us, could it? No, we were here because Chris had kidney stones. She needed to concentrate, I felt, get things right, make sure she had the correct notes. Leukaemia? That was cancer. Chris couldn’t possibly have cancer, he just couldn’t.

There was no one behind us and she was talking to my husband. It was his diagnosis and our world shattered around us the moment the consultant uttered those words. So many people have been in exactly the same position; I’m sure they’ve felt totally alone, just as we did. There were words floating around that no one wants applied to them or to someone they love – chronic myeloid, oncology, chemotherapy. All of these words are so loaded. When you hear them being said to the person you share your life with, it’s like a bomb exploding. You wish that the clock could be turned back – not weeks or months but to that moment before you heard the word ‘cancer’.

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.’