Don Juan Samos of Tree Hill

Born 04-08-2018 in Belgium

Mother: Honeydevils Taylor Dayne

Father: Americanlynx Uduray

Black Smoke White

Pedigree Don Juan Samos

“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul that makes us reach for more, that plants the fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. That’s what I hope to give you forever.”

Our Don Juan, a real sweetheart who with his charisma makes everyone in love who sees him. And so he also conquered my heart, on a picture when he was 4 weeks he was sitting on the ground next to his sister and he looked like a cuddly bear. I falling in love! I was eating with my husband at a Greek restaurand and drinking a Samos wine, on that moment we decided that this cuddly bear together with his sister Dream like Madonna come live with us. We choose the name Don Juan because he is a real charmer and Samos we choose because the Samos wine what I was drinking on the moment that we decided in consultation with the breeder that he can come to us. Samos is a wonderful sweetheart, he is purring a whole day long and he love it to sleep close to me in bed. He is friends with all the Coontastic sweethearts and he can talking whole story's with his special sweet sound. I call him always "Saampie" what is a affectionate word for "together" because he is always happy between the others and love it to be together with them. He is very playfull with all the sweethearts and as we have a new kitten in the group he do all on a very sweet way to makes direct friends with them, then he makes also very sweet sounds to them. When he knows that we are going to prepare the food for the sweethearts he will always stand on a high scratching post and meow very loudly,  or that he will warn the others that the food will be served. He love it to be in the garden, there he can look to the birds for hours and hours and when the evening falls he go hunting on the moths. He is just a big sweetheart who only gives a lot of positivity and cheerfulness, a gentle sweetheart who is never naughty. We are very happy that he is forever together with his sister and that we can enjoy his happiness and love every day again. 

Thursday 7 July 2022 late in the evening Samos had to vomit 1 time. Spitting up once is not immediately something to panic, and certainly not if they are still themselves and do not look sick. But after one night I thought he looked sick, his temperature was measured and it was 37 degrees, so I immediately called the vet and that afternoon a consultation with our vet. He looked at Samos and by feeling he discovered that stool was stuck in the intestines, so the conclusion that there was consipation. My husband asked if he did not want to be sure that it is also stool, for example by means of an X-ray, but this was not immediately necessary. At this point we should have intervened ourselves and insisted on an X-ray but we have a lot of confidence in our vet and have no experience with constipation in our cats so we trusted that it would indeed be the case. Samos was given fluids under the skin, medication for the nausea and an injection of medication that could speed up his bowel movements. We had to keep an eye on him over the weekend to see if he was going to poop and if he did poop it would probably get better soon. Friday evening I told my husband that I don't feel good about it, that I would rather have had an X-ray done to make sure there was nothing else wrong. And I was also disappointed that we didn't insist on an Xray that day. Samos still looked sick and all night he did nothing and lay in one position like a sick bird. I recognized this position of lying down because it was the same as our Mr. Bojangles had when he had a toy in his intestines and needed urgent surgery. Because I didn't trust it and couldn't believe that this was just a constipation, Samos went straight to the emergency clinic on Saturday morning for a second opinion. When she felt she already noticed that something was not right, so they immediately acted and an X-ray was done, they immediately saw that something was wrong, so an ultrasound followed. And then their fears came true, Samos turned out to be constipated and invaginated! All alarm bells went off and a team of doctors was arranged to operate on Samos urgently at a clinic 15 minutes away. The priority was to prevent shock and to operate urgently. I am so grateful to the vet for giving her all and acting so quickly that she saved Samos his life! It was a very long and heavy operation, when opened the fluid around his intestines turned out to be clear fluid and luckily there was no intestinal leakage! When opening the intestines, it turned out that there was a lot of pus in the intestines and there was indeed an invagination. His bowels were flushed several times during the operation to make sure no pus was left behind, then he had to remove 8cm of his intestines. After the intestines were reconnected, it was positive to see that they gave a good response. A few hours after the operation we were allowed to visit Samos. He was very drowsy because he had been given a high dose of opiate after the operation, despite that he did react when he heard and saw me by lifting his head and looking me deeply in the eyes, at that moment my heart broke! Tears down my cheeks, in the first place because he was still alive, so from joy but also from sadness to see him like this. Now the moment of fighting and recovery started, Samos is very sick and so very exciting how it will go in the coming days. Sunday morning telephone contact, Samos had fortunately got through the night well, he looked better but now had a fever of 40.6 degrees, which could be because of a reaction to the operation but could also have another reason so that was still exciting. At the end of the afternoon contact again, the fever had fortunately dropped to 40.0 degrees but still a fever. He also doesn't like being in the clinic which is understandable and hides under the rug in his hutch instead of laying on it. He doesn't want to eat yet. In the evening another telephone update, good news, his temperature had now dropped to 39.6 so that's very good news! On my advice she fed him through a syringe hills recovery and he seemed to like that. Now it's exciting to see if he can keep the food down and not throw up. Monday morning another telephone update, temperature was now 39.4 so luckily no fever which has come back, which is very positive! Samos still does not like it in the clinic and still does not want to eat himself. I can visit him again this afternoon and see how he will react to this. Hopefully he will eat a little himself again and that he will have a little more positive recovery every day, but for now it is still too short to be sure of this and it is still very exciting. We will of course be posting an update here regularly and hopefully this will consist of only positive news about his recovery.

Monday 11 July in the end of the day I went to visit Samos again at the clinic. It was now day two after his big operation and the vet had already told us over the phone that he doesn't like it in the clinic and that he doesn't want to eat anything. When I arrived at the clinic and Samos saw me again he reacted immediately, he hugged and yes he even wanted to eat a few bites. The vet was surprised to see him like this, they hadn't seen this once in 2 days and so she decided that Samos should go home because this will give a much better overview of his recovery. What a great news! I was so surprised because I didn't expect this. I also thought it was quite exciting because what if it didn't go well with Samos? But of course we can always call the vet in that case and that also gave me a little more peace and for Samos there is of course no nicer place to recover than in his familiar environment and with all his furry loves around him. And so I left for home with Samos and a lot of medicines. Once home we certainly saw an improvement in Samos' behavior and attitude than before the operation but he was very weak. This was also understandable as he is still very ill, on top of that he had a major operation and almost died when he arrived at the emergency clinic on Saturday! He slept next to me on the couch the entire evening in a very relaxed position. At night he slept separately with me in the bedroom because we also have to keep a close eye on whether he pees and poops. Fortunately, peeing went well. He never likes wet food, he is a cat who prefers to eat hard food, so eating was not successful yet, so I fed him with a syringe of Hills Recovery with Nutribound mixed in. On Tuesday Samos was still without energy, most of the time he sleeps and does not do much, you can still see that he is not well. Wednesday morning Samos pooped and I was so happy!! That afternoon Samos had his check up at the vet, she was very happy to see him and was even excited that he already looked better than Saturday despite losing a lot of weight because he is not eating well. She felt that there was still stool in his intestines what was there on Saturday and so he had an enema in the hope that the hard stool could come out. This proved to do its job quickly because when we got back home Samos immediately went on the litter box and pooped! Very hard stools containing a long, thicker strand of fur! And this probably caused all these problems as well. We were very happy that this was finally out and hoped that this would help Samos improve even more. Unfortunately this didn't happen and he looked even more gloomy. Thursday we also saw no improvement and in the evening we discovered that there was pus on Samos furr by his belly out of his surgical wound. Immediately contacted the emergency vet (luckily the same vet who also operated Samos) and we could come straight away. And then it turned out that there was an abscess under the skin on his stomach and so it had opened and therefore the pus that we saw. The vet drained the abscess and removed any pus that was present as well. Samos was so sweet and was treated without any problems. Immediately it was decided to replace the antibiotics (he had 2 different ones) for 1 antibiotic especially for the absess. We had to make sure that the hole near the wound remains open so that pus can also easily escape. And luckily Samos was allowed to return home immediately, also because he did not have a fever. Unfortunately on Friday we still didn't see much improvement in Samos but we keep in mind that the antibiotics should also do their job. We clean the wound 3 times a day and Saterday evening again discovered pus on his stomach while cleaning we see no pus coming out of the wound. Again the wound was well cleaned and miraculously we suddenly saw an improvement in Samos's behaviour. He was more alert, had a better look and was also happier. Still very tired and with little energy but he was doing small things again and seemed more comfortable too. So maybe it gave him some relief that the pus had come out again or the antibiotics are now starting to work? Sunday morning Samos pooped! So very happy with this because that is a sign that his intestines are working properly again! Sunday during the day and evening we still saw a positive improvement at Samos and! Today is Monday and we still don't see any relapses in Samos, he still doesn't eat well, but he eats cat treats and also a few bites of hard food and we still feed him several times a day with a syringe. We know it's still very exciting and we're still not in a safe zone, also Samos is still very swampy because he's lost so much weight and he's always been a slim cat so he doesn't have any reserves left which makes his body also has to work double to recover. However, we now dare to be a little more positive than we were last week and we hope that from now on Samos will improve a little more every day.

18-08-2022 update: We are now 5 weeks after the major surgery that Samos had. And I can now say that the operation was certainly successful. After we went to the vet with Samos because of his abscess he got other antibiotics, we cleaned his wound several times a day and the sweetie tolerated this very well and even lay on his side on his own when he saw that I came with the things for cleaning. The antibiotics did a good job because the wound stayed nice and clean and we also saw improvement in Samos's behaviour. He became more and more himself and I was so very happy to see that! Had multiple checkups with the vet and each time she was full of praise for Samos and his recovery. I was still worried because Samos didn't regain much weight, luckily he didn't lose weight anymore but stayed at the weight he had after the operation. But the vet reassured me and told me that Samos is an ICU patient, which means that he was really close to death and that his body needs a long time to recover. And because Samos has always been a very slim cat, he may never regain his old weight, but the most important thing is that he is healthy again for now and that he is our happy sweetheart again and that his sweet meow again several times a day. Samos was never a big eater when it came to wet food, so he still is today. We have not had to feed him with a syringe for a long time, he eats independently and he probably also eats enough to at least remain stable in his weight and that is good. Twice a day he gets a saucer with hills recovery wet food, we know that this is actually not a food for a long time but it is the wet food he likes so he gets it. He also eats hard food, but when we see him eating there he eats small portions and not a lot. Yet he probably eats the hard food more often than we see because today I weighed him again and he has gained 200 grams in 1 week and that is of course very good! We hope he stays on this positive path although it will remain in our system for a long time to check him several times a day I think but luckily Samos still enjoys all the attention!

 Family: 

Samos his mother is also the mother of Dream like Madonna

Samos his father is also the father of Dream like Madonna,  Big Fighter and he is the grandfather of Epic Boy

Samos his great-grandfather is also in the family line of Mr. Bojangles, Chapman Mr. Dreamy, Countdown Pablo, Laguna Surprise, Special One Sinatra, Flash Gordon, Sweet Vinzent, Sweet Vancouver, Midnight Jewel, Precious Firebird & Magical Surprise

Samos his great-grandfather is the great-great-grandfather of King of my Heart, Jon Snow, Lion King Leonido, Prince Amaro & Prince Faro