The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at City Hospital, Belfast was a circus. Every day of the week a different clown (read Consultant) took charge of the ICU. What was right on a Monday was completely wrong on a Tuesday. The same action would be pronounced ‘perfect’ by one clown and ‘abhorrent’ by another. To make things even better, they didn’t talk to each other. The flunkies (read Junior doctors) were the in-betweeners that got lammed from both sides as their shifts crossed over time-territories. They were the pawns on the frontline that took over the running of the unit from one clown at the beginning of a shift and handed over to the other at the end of it. The flunkies dodged the arrows of conflict between the clowns – on the phones, in hospital corridors and at handovers. They were the ones that ran around all night looking after the sickest patients in the hospital, only to be lambasted the next morning. They were the buckets in which the bile of bitterness was collected, the one that the clowns didn’t have the gall to throw at each other.

In 2004, I was one of those flunkies. After about 8 months of this non-sense, I was done. I was loosing my sense of self, my confidence in making decisions and most importantly, the pride in my job. It was time to stop and take stock. After a nasty night shift, I was handing over the patients to the day team. At one point the Consultant said to me ‘you need your head examined’. That did it. I couldn’t bear to go home only to return to this hell-hole ten hours later. I walked into the Psychiatry Outpatient Department which was on the way to the car-park. There were two empty seats in the waiting area. I planted myself on one.
“Do you have an appointment?” one of the receptionists asked me.
“No. I don’t. I can wait for as long as it takes. I work here. If I am not seen today I may not come back tomorrow.” I didn’t fully comprehend what I was saying but it was my truth.

Dr Ingram was a handsome young psychiatrist with kind eyes and a small beer belly, well couched in his grey suit. He understood. He gave me 6 weeks off on grounds of ‘work-related-stress’ and started me on Fluoxetine. I was also seen five or six times by a therapist. She was a kind elderly lady who listened. She suggested getting a cat.

At the Antrim Animal rescue home an adorable black and white feline peered at Saagar’s dad and me from her cage. It was her eyes that got me – curious and twinkling, like a child. They said this little girl had been there for a month. Before that she’d had a rough life on the streets for a few months. Her right ear had a wedge missing from its edge. We decided to call her Bella. We were advised to keep her strictly indoors for at least 6 weeks, till she got familiarised with the smells of the house. She found her way to the tops of kitchen cabinets and radiator covers, squeezed behind sofas and underneath beds, inside shoes and suitcases. The only place she didn’t like was her brand new soft bed.

On our trip to the vet for a basic check-up, we were told that the she-cat was in fact a he-cat. After much discussion, Saagar’s dad’s choice of name came up tops. ‘Mr Bronx’, the old faithful. He soon became a source of great joy, comfort and hilarity for us. We had him playing with balls of wool, soft toys with bells and chasing the beam of a laser pen. He was pure joy but kept his distance. Slowly he let us stroke and cuddle him. His purring beneath the palms of my hand soothed my soul and made me feel deeply connected with this four-legged being. Within a month we were having full-fledged conversations.

The Fluoxetine made me feel like a zombie. No joy. No pain. No love.
It was dehumanising. At times it made me terribly restless but I stuck with it. It was proof that pills can’t make you happy. May be they take the edge off, but at a price. The best thing about that time was that I could rest. I was left alone. I had some control on my days and nights, which I had not had for years.

After 6 weeks, it was time to go back to work. I did. My schedule was reshuffled to ensure I didn’t spend much time working in ICU. It worked. I got back on my feet. Later I discovered that other junior doctors before me, had had similar unpleasant experiences, complaints had been made about the sad state of affairs at that hospital but nothing had changed on ground. It was an open secret, not spoken about while the abuse persisted and continued to break innocent young doctors down.

Nine years later, Saagar was home from University and I got a phone call from him at work. “Mamma, can we get a cat? I found one on Gumtree.”
That evening we went over to a tiny flat in Sydenham occupied by a black family of four – mum and three kids. On a window sill lounged another family of four, a grey mother-cat with her three grey kittens. Six weeks old. The kittens were being carried around the flat like rags by the kids. They didn’t care if they lifted them by their ears or tails or bellies.They released the sweet little things from various heights above the floor, cornered them and held them tight. They told us about what the cats ate. We picked the littlest one, a grey and white mini-punk. We got a bell, a bowl and some toys for him from the pet shop and brought him home in a cardboard box. He was christened ‘Milkshake’ by Saagar, who became his loving mum that summer.

The sedate Mr Bronx was too old and too calm for the punchy young Milkshake who developed an attitude very quickly, but they found a way to co-exist, keeping a safe distance from each other.

Not once did it occur to me that there might be a connection between the circumstances in which we got the first cat and then, the second.