CASE STUDY 6 – SAPHIRE

Background information - Saphire was bred by her current owner. Saphire remained extremely over bonded with her mother until the age of 8 (6 months ago) when her mother died. Since that time Saphire has emotionally fallen apart. She is urinating all over the house particularly over the spots where her mother had little accidents due to kidney disease. Her owner reports that she has become reclusive and submissive to all the other cats. She chooses to spend most of her time upstairs hiding away from everybody.  She has always been timid of strangers particularly men.

My thoughts about Saphire are that she probably was always an under confident cat, that relied upon her mother for guidance and support, and she never really knew who she was herself. When her mother died, her little world fell apart, and suddenly she found herself having to make her own decisions and try and get on with her life, as well as trying to grieve for her mother. She couldn’t cope with this and began to be reclusive from both people and animals, urinating around the house to try and keep a familiar scent around her to try and make herself feel secure.

Saphire’s owner sent me some of her hair and I conducted a full kinesiology test to find out he  weaknesses and then worked with the oils to strengthen the test. I sent the following oils to Saphire’s owner and asked her to work on a daily basis with her

What these oils are for- 

Neroli hydrosol – This a great heart remedy. It heals the heart on an emotional and physical level. It is great for loss of a companion and for mental stress. Good for an animal that has lost the will to live .

Ginger  - Helps to give the animal confidence and warms the stomach and digestive tract on a physical level.

Lemon – helps to deal with issues of trust

Grapeseed Oil - Good plain base, contains some vitamin E.

Summary of Saphire’s Diary - Saphire worked with inhalation only, at no time did she want to take any internally. Saphire seemed to only want to work with the oils once a day, not twice, and in my experience this is very normal for cats, I have not yet had a cat that wanted to work twice a day with them, so I told the owner to only offer once a day and to decide whether this would be better done in the morning or evening. She decided that this was best done in the morning. Lemon was her favourite oil, she regularly purred whilst ‘kneading’ ‘treading’ with her paws, her  next  favourite was the Ginger and after a few days of working with the oil, she would also purr when the  bottle was offered to her. The Neroli was the one which she took a while to ‘warm’ to, probably because this was helping her to deal with her most difficult emotion which is grief from her mother dying.

Conclusion -

This is what Saphire’s owner wrote to me via e-mail, as her conclusion of what aromatherapy has done for Saphire –

Her basic character has changed dramatically, much more confident and more relaxed, she wants to intermingle with the other members of the family.  She is not so up tight and prepared to come towards me when I call her. Usually drops her back in the past if I tried to stroke her.  Now graciously allows me to stroke her and purrs all the time.   Big improvement.  At no time has she wanted to lick the bottles just relied entirely on smell alone.. All has settled down now and a month later on bonfire night Nov 5^th I found she stayed in the room with me sitting beside me whereas in the past she would hide away upstairs. Also every night now she comes and joins the rest by sitting in the lounge with me and is confident enough to ignore all the other cats and settle down on the chair to rest and be part of the family. I feel a very good result all round. She is much more confident, therefore she is not as stressed which means she is able to move around without being frightened of her own shadow. She has stopped urinating and goes outside now. Whereas before she would not leave the upstairs and hence lots of accidents. All my visitors are now saying they see much more of her around now and walks past them with confidence and without fear, even my male friends. I am really thrilled to see her so happy.

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