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Calling
Dr. Tiger
By KATIE SCHNEIDER, Sun Media
Alberta Sun News
February 15, 2009
CALGARY — This was no ordinary CAT scan.
But it potentially saved Lionel Adams’ life.
Now recovering from surgery to remove cancer from his lung, Adams, 59,
is crediting his eight-year-old feline friend Tiger for alerting him and
his family doctor to a mass in his lung.
“He would climb into bed and take his paw and drag it down my left side — he
was adamant there was something there,” he said. “And it was right
where the cancer was.”
Adams, who has suffered from bronchitis, asthma and emphysema, had showed
no symptoms of lung cancer before his kitty’s bizarre examination.
But about seven months ago, after mentioning the cat’s strange behaviour
to his family doctor, he was referred to a specialist who caught the disease
at stage one in his left lung.
“They did an X-ray, they spotted something on the left side,” he
said.
To get rid of the cancer, doctors removed a piece of his lung about the
size of a Coke can that had been shredded in half. And now Adams is heralding
Tiger as a hero for potentially saving his life.
“I think if he hadn’t done the pawing part it could have gone on
for another five, six months undetected,” he said. “I feel like it
could have been a lot worse if the cat hadn’t had tuned us in to something
there, to something he felt was wrong.
“I would say he’s my hero.”
Barbara Walmer, department head of behaviour at the Calgary Humane Society,
said though studies reveal dogs are capable of sniffing out cancer and
predicting types of seizures in their owners, other pets like cats have
been reported to act in similar ways.
She said cats have a good sense of smell and can be tuned in to illnesses
in humans because they are sensitive to subtle changes in their body language.
“If they spend a lot of time with you they learn a whole lot about you,
your body language,” she said. “When things change because of illness
they pick up on it, so whether it’s they know if it is cancer or something
is changed, we don’t know.”
Either way, Tiger should be credited for potentially saving his owner’s
life, Walmer said.
“Especially with the way it started and how it ended up unfolding … they
really would have not found out if the can’t didn’t act,” she
said.
And that’s saying a lot for a cat that has never been one for showing
affection. “He’s never had that much to do with me except to
come over for a pet,” Adams said, with a laugh.
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The Infinite Cat Project
Presented by Mike Stanfill, Private Hand
Illustration,
Flash Animation,
Web Design
www.privatehand.com
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