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Two cases of the same remedy to ponder over the question of whether
there is such a thing as ‘veterinary homeopathy’.
I am Tizzy!
Tizzy was born in a cupboard, nobody had noticed that her mum was
pregnant. Her mum was a rescued cat. Tizzy was the biggest of the
three kittens. One of the smaller ones was euthanazed because of
some deformity. It is strange that the owners did not notice that
the queen was pregnant because they are attentive, knowledgeable
and close to their animals.
When Tizzy was 2 years old her mum died in a car accident. Tizzy
also was involved in a car accident but recovered well from her
injuries.
She has problems with fleas and harvest mites (thrombidion*). She
does not tolerate classical flea-treatment applications: she salivates
and seems to stop breathing. She responds badly to chemical wormers
as well.
As per usual, the rest of the case is in the original order and
phrasing of the owner:
"She was a big fat kitten. Her brother is timid. Her mum was
always a very friendly cat, always moulting like mad. You can talk
to Tizzy.
She is always cuddling Betty, our dog. Betty is ok about this,
she is nice to animals. Tizzy will greet us in a second. Betty gets
the first greeting. Betty was her playmate when she was a kitten.
Tizzy is the supreme being; she has a big personality. She is so
confident, we are all her slaves. I have never seen a cat so confident.
She eats little and often. If you don’t give her anything
to eat when she demands food she is sick and will go and eat plants
and other stuff. She has heart burn and needs to keep on eating.
She will vomit liquid but as soon as she eats she is fine. She has
to eat 5 times per day. This may be a possible consequence of having
received too many medicines when she had her accident.
She has lots of friends amongst our neighbours in the surroundings.
All winter she is in and all summer she is out.
She always eats the mice she catches.
When she has fleas, she scratches herself to bleeding. When I bathe
her she is ok for 2-3 days. She is ok about being bathed: she is
confident she is not going to drown.
She is easily indignated and then walks off. She demands that you
are quite careful around her. You have to be gentle and respectful
to her.
She has no road sense; she did not learn from the car accident.
She is determined to go out across the road. She doesn’t care
if you tell her off.
She is a cuddly cat, she is very friendly.
She is not worried about cars: 'I am Tizzy, I am not worried. I
also check you out when you are in my house.'
She became more friendly with us when her mum died. Her mother
was very attentive to the kittens but often she used to pounce on
them as if they were prey. It sometimes looked a very vicious game.
Tizzy gets annoyed if she does not get her own way.
She sits up high to talk with you. She gets comfort from sitting
on your chest."
Physically, there is nothing special about her. She is lean and
shows the typical crusts on the back associated with flea problems
and crusts around ears, between digits and on her ventrum associated
with harvest mites.
Many of Tizzy’s features are very cat-like. What I find unusual
is that her owner explains how bold she is and at the same time
she wants to be treated with caution. This must hide some insecurity.
We can also suspect that there must have been an issue with her
mother: being pounded on by your mother as a kitten is not the ideal
introduction into the world. That does not provide me with a remedy,
but the remedy should be able to ‘explain’ this situation.
One thing is sure, Tizzy is confident:
Mind, Confident.
The description of her need to eat to improve her vomiting tendency
is unusual.
Stomach, nausea, eating, amel
These two symptoms are covered by only one remedy (Synthesys 9.1):
Lac Humanum.
One could ask the question whether giving human milk as a remedy
for a cat makes sense.
Well, there are a few features in this case that remind me of what
Tinus Smits wrote in Homeopathic Links (vol. 12, 5/99) about Lac
Maternum. Of course I should not use information on Lac Maternum
to prescribe Lac Humanum, but from the point of view of their origin
there is not a great difference between the two substances. Lac
Maternum is the milk of one woman and Lac Humanum is the collection
of milk of several women at different lactation periods. Also, over
the years, I have noticed that for very similar remedies (like in
this case) some of their essence may be confused. I also did not
dispose of a dynamic synthesis of Lac Humanum.
Especially, the following phrase in his article supported my prescription
of the remedy: "This remedy helps the person to become aware
of his own needs and of what he really wants for himself. This remedy
helps the person to become aware of his own frontier and makes it
possible for him to cleanse his own energy from what is ‘not
him’."
Maybe Tizzy was confused about her identity as a cat and therefore
expressed rather caricature behaviour.
One dose of the remedy (Helios) in 200K changed the animal to become
a normal cat. All the exaggerated features subsided. The itchiness
initially increased for 2 weeks then to disappear quickly. Without
being able to precisely describe what happened, the owner repeated
to me on two occasions that Tizzy has changed so much for the better.
Although the remedy has not been put to the test of the following
year’s harvest mite attack, the change in her being and the
disappearance of the skin problems before the end of the harvest
mite season, indicate that this was a good similimum.
*Harvest mites are the larvae of little red spiders that live in
grass and fields in and around August when it is warm. Some animals
(and people) react with an itchy dermatitis, particularly in skin-folds,
where these larvae attach themselves to feed on lymph. Only a minority
of animals and people seem to react to them. There are factors of
allergy and individual sensitivity involved in the appearance of
this very itchy condition.
Tinus Smits writes that Lac Maternum is associated with want of
self esteem, anxiety about life, sadness, lack of joy, ineffectiveness.
Similar symptoms are present in the pathogenesis of Lac Humanum.
These characteristics are not really present with Tizzy. I put more
weight in a possible causation: the experience of being pounded
on by her mother, as if she were prey, can surely cause some ‘doubts’
about one’s existence/nature. Further she became more related
to the dog who was her youth friend; could this have caused further
confusion about her species/origin? Tizzy was not a settled individual,
she seemed somewhat out of the picture. Opposite to this were the
really frank behavioural streaks expressing: ‘I am Tizzy’.
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