Should I stay or should I go?

Hello my loyal readers! (At this point it probably only applies to my computer-competent grandmother). The last time I blogged I had left a message on the Arnolds’ answering machine, asking for more info about their cat’s mysterious condition! Well, I am close to getting some answers!

On Wednesday I had the busiest day EVER at work, which included a diabetic dog, a hyperactive cat and a very embarrassed father who had been forced to bring in his four year old daughter and her stuffed rabbit. Turns out that she had dropped the toy rabbit in the bath that morning, and was convinced that he had either drowned, or suffered some kind of post-traumatic shock as a result. An almighty tantrum had apparently ensued, which resulted in a harassed father and a very determined little girl sitting in the waiting room! He assured me that they would wait until all the real animals had been seen, and after an examination I prescribed lots of bed rest to help the bunny recover.

By the end of the day I was ready for a glass of wine and an episode of QI on the television; however the receptionist informed me that there was still one more person waiting to see me. I popped my head into the reception area, fully intending to inform the customer that I was leaving and another vet would see their animal. I quickly changed my mind however, when I saw that it was Lucy Arnold! She was looking rather worried and asked me nervously if we could speak privately, so I ushered her into the treatment room and closed the door behind us. She seemed a little on edge and was speaking really hesitantly, constantly glancing towards the door, as if she was worried that we would be overheard. Lucy told me that she thought she had an idea where the strange fleas had come from, (at last! A breakthrough!) But I must swear to keep the information to myself. This was so intriguing that I instantly promised not to pass on any information that she could give me, and to keep it between the two of us. She still seemed nervous though, and told me that I would need to see where the fleas had come from for myself. She was convinced that I would never believe her story, despite my best attempts to persuade her to tell me what was going on. Instead, she promised that everything would make sense if I met her on Saturday morning, at Battersea Power Station. She said that she would be able to show me exactly where the fleas had come from, but that I would need to show up alone and keep our meeting secret. I was so intrigued and anxious to find out what was going on that I agreed to the meeting, and with a final promise of confidentiality I showed her out of the surgery.

Except...am I mad? What on earth am I thinking, agreeing to meet a teenage girl at a disused power station on my own? It’s probably a ridiculous practical joke...I’ll arrive and thirty teenagers will leap out at me with water bombs or something. Only, I can’t help but be a little curious. The secrecy and the mysterious meeting, it’s all so cloak-and-dagger it almost seems ridiculous. Only...what if? What if it really does help to shed some light on the strange fleas and their origin? I can only deduce that I am completely insane to go, but of course, I know that I will! I’ll let you know what I manage to find out!

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Maybe they have a lizard?!

It’s been a while since my last blog post, but I’ve been searching high and low for a clue to these strange fleas that I found, and it’s been taking up all of my spare time! I left a message on the Arnolds’ answer phone asking them to call me with any more information, but I haven’t heard back yet so I guess they must be pretty busy right now. I just had to do something myself, so I got busy looking through all the old archives of various flea species to see if any of them looked similar to the ones that I found. This is where the mystery deepened! After trawling through what felt like millions of files and descriptions, I finally found a type of flea that I reckon is identical to my mystery bugs. The picture of the preserved flea looked exactly like those from the Arnolds’ cat; same shiny jet black shell, slightly larger than the average flea. It has to be the same one! Except.....it was last recorded in existence almost 300 years ago....how could it possibly be the same one? Perhaps the species died out but somehow a few were preserved, or they migrated to another country but had found their way back to the UK. It just didn’t make any sense! I seem to have found an extinct species of flea, alive and well on a suburban cat! The original name of this flea species has an old form of the word ‘lizard’ in it too...but surely fleas aren’t attracted to lizards? Perhaps these ones were? Hopefully I can get some answers from the Arnolds when I hear back from them; I’ll let you all know what I discover once I’ve spoken to them! (Maybe they have a lizard?!)

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Mystery Fleas

So, since I last blogged, I took the little flea creatures that I found on the Arnolds’ cat up to the IVM to get some checks run on them. I was hoping that this would shed some light on their species and maybe give me a clue as to how the cat could have picked them up; I hate being caught out in my job by a question that I don’t know the answer to, so I was eager to find out what they were. These little bugs were one big pain!

And this was the point where everything started to get a little strange! It began when I met up with Buckley to go over her findings; she had none. She couldn’t find any species of flea, lice or tick that matched the bugs that I had found on the Arnolds’ cat, and she really knows her stuff when it comes to strange and rare animals. She agreed that they seemed to be a type of flea, but had never seen anything like them before! How incredible! Were they an entirely new species? And if they were, how on earth had that cat picked them up? I would have to get in touch with the Arnolds and see if they could give me any more information that would make some sense of all of this!

If this is a new species of flea its certainly an interesting one...Buckley observed their jet black shells and noticed that they seem to be even more hardy than regular fleas. Your average cat flea is pretty tough, and can’t be easily squashed or killed by scratching. However, these bugs seem to be much more resistant to damage, particularly from heat. God, just think, I could get credited with discovering a new species! I’ll ask the Arnolds for more info, and also check through the National Species Archives to see if I can find anything similar in there...there has to be an answer to these mystery bugs!

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A Vet for Dragons?!

I think being a vet is easy; it’s something I have been desperate to do since I was five, and helping animals and their owners every day is the best job in the world! I love animals, always have, but dragons?! Now that’s another matter! When Lucy and her family brought their gorgeous cat to my surgery, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, just a simple case of fleas that I could cure pretty easily. The first step to removing fleas is to give the cat a good brush with a damp comb, which unsurprisingly they are never too happy about! You can also put Vaseline on the comb to help the fleas stick to it (ICK!), so as we were wrestling with the cat and getting water EVERYWHERE I got a chance to get a look at a couple of the fleas that had stuck to the comb. Little did I know that this moment would change everything, including my career! The fleas that I had managed to trap looked different to the types that I was used to. Fleas are absolutely tiny, about two millimetres big, but these looked a bit bigger than normal, and were completely black instead of a grubby greyish brown. Very weird! I gave Lucy and her Dad some treatments for their cat and sent them home, and then got the fleas under my microscope straight away! They didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before, with a hard smooth shell that was jet black and shiny. I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of an investigator, so I decided to get working and find out what these little things were! A friend of mine, Buckley, worked as a scientist at the IVM (Institute of Veterinary Medicine), and I knew that she’d be able to help me identify my mystery bugs! I very carefully packed the fleas up in tiny sealed dishes, and stored them in the little fridge at the back of the surgery where we keep medicines. Then I called Buckley straight away to arrange a trip to the IVM for some answers!

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