14/10/2026
Princess – the kitten who wasn’t quite ready to give up
This is Princess, a little cat whose story I’ll be presenting at the LMHI Congress in Mexico later this month.
Princess came to us at around two months old. Her owners had had her for a week and she had never passed faeces normally. She was tiny, underweight, had a poor appetite and would become increasingly unwell as her bowel filled. Enemas would give temporary relief, but within a few days she would obstruct again.
Eventually we discovered that Princess had been born with Type II a**l atresia and a rectoperineal fistula. In simple terms, her a**s had not developed normally. Instead, she was trying to pass faeces through a tiny abnormal opening just below where her a**s should have been. The opening was simply too narrow for her bowel to empty properly.
By three months old she had developed megacolon. She needed laxatives, fibre, enemas every few days and eventually her owner had to manually remove the faeces at home. It was painful and distressing for Princess and extremely difficult for her owner. Her quality of life was poor.
Specialist corrective surgery wasn't financially possible and eventually Princess was booked in for euthanasia.
By this stage our nursing team had become very attached to this feisty little kitten and asked me if there was anything else we could do. I asked her owner to postpone the decision and leave Princess with me for a week so that I could try treating her homeopathically.
And then something remarkable happened.
Following her initial homeopathic treatment, Princess passed an enormous, very hard mass of faeces. It was painful and dramatic — and one of my nurses was bitten in the process! But the following day she passed more faeces completely unaided.
From that point onwards, she began passing faeces regularly. Her appetite improved, she started growing and gaining weight, and the little kitten who had been facing euthanasia began to thrive.
Princess ultimately came to live with me, which meant I had the unusual opportunity to follow her progress closely.
Her case also became fascinating from a homeopathic perspective. As she improved, a very different picture emerged: brave, confident, incredibly fast and athletic, desperate for freedom, forever escaping and with an enormous appetite. I eventually prescribed Peregrine Falcon, after which her appetite reduced and she became calmer.
There is also a lovely little twist to this case: birds naturally have a cloaca — a common opening for the intestinal, urinary and reproductive tracts. For a cat whose own anatomy had developed with an abnormal outlet from the re**um, I find the response to a bird remedy particularly intriguing.
Princess's story is one of my favourite examples of why I love practising integrative veterinary medicine. Sometimes a case that appears to have reached the end of the road still has another chapter.
And Princess certainly had another chapter. ❤️🐾
