When Fraser Met Billy: An Autistic Boy, a Rescue Cat, and the Transformative Power of Animal Connections - Softcover

Booth, Louise

 
9781476797298: When Fraser Met Billy: An Autistic Boy, a Rescue Cat, and the Transformative Power of Animal Connections
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1476797293 ISBN 13: 9781476797298
Verlag: ATRIA, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

In the spirit of A Street Cat Named Bob and Dewey comes a mother’s touching, true account of how a rescue cat named Billy transformed her autistic boy’s life.

Louise Booth and her husband had always dreamed of having a child. But when their son Fraser was born, Louise immediately knew something was wrong. Fraser was an angry child, prone to frequent screaming fits. When the family moved to the Balmoral Estate (Queen Elizabeth’s summer residence), where Louise’s husband had been hired to be the Queen’s electrician, Louise plummeted into depression, worn down by her son’s constant needs. At eighteen months, Fraser was diagnosed with autism and hypotonia, a muscle tone condition that affected his ability to walk and use his hands. Louise and her husband Chris were given the devastating news that Fraser would never go to a mainstream school, and it seemed all hope was lost.

Then came Billy. A grey cat who’d been found in an abandoned house and left at a shelter, Billy came home with the family, purred, and laid his paws across Fraser’s lap. The two became inseparable from that moment on, and slowly but surely, Billy transformed Fraser’s life.

Within two years of Billy joining their family, Louise watched her son evolve from being a toddler prone to anxiety, tantrums, and sudden emotional meltdowns into a much calmer, less moody child with a bright future. In their home on the beautiful Balmoral Estate, Billy still acts as Fraser’s guardian, never leaving his side at mealtimes and bedtimes or whenever he’s feeling low. Their profound bond has immeasurably improved both their lives and the family’s, bringing them countless hilarious and touching moments along the way.

A Sunday Times bestseller in the UK, When Fraser Met Billy is “a story of quiet, enigmatic triumph” (The Daily Mail), a powerful testament to a family’s love for their child, and a treat for animal lovers everywhere.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Louise Booth is the mother of Fraser and Pippa. She lives on the Balmoral Estate in Scotland with her husband, her children, and their cat, Billy.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

When Fraser Met Billy Chapter 1 Billy and Bear


It was a bright, early summer evening in 2011 and as we drove east along the banks of the River Dee the Highland landscape looked at its picture-postcard best. In the distance, the area’s highest peak, Lochnagar, was bathed in a beautiful, golden glow while beneath us the setting sun was dancing off the dark waters of the river in a dazzling display of colors.

Every now and again we would pass an angler, knee-deep in the water, patiently casting their line in search of the sea trout and salmon that were now in season. It didn’t occur to me at the time but looking back, I can see that, in a way, I was on a fishing expedition myself. What was that old saying? You’ve got to lose a fly to catch a trout.

My husband, Chris, was at the wheel of our car while our two children were in the back. Our daughter Pippa was just over six months old and fast asleep in her baby seat. It was our three-year-old son Fraser who was, as usual, preoccupying us. He was sitting quietly, saying very little but staring intently at the two small photographs that he’d brought with him. We weren’t quite sure what to expect from him this evening. But then, where Fraser was concerned, we never were.

He’d been diagnosed with autism just under two years earlier, in August 2009, at the very early age of 18 months. Like many boys with autism, he struggled to communicate and was prone to withdrawing into his own world. He was also capable of extreme emotional meltdowns, often over the most seemingly trivial things. In addition to this he suffered from hypotonia, a rare muscle tone condition that made his joints loose and floppy. This meant he found it very difficult to perform simple functions such as gripping things with his hands. He also found it a challenge to stand let alone walk. In fact, it had only been in the past year or so that he’d become more mobile, largely thanks to supporting splints he now wore on his lower leg and ankles.

For the past year and a half, Fraser had been receiving treatment from a small team of experts, including a speech therapist and a behavioral therapist. We’d been told in no uncertain terms that he would never attend a normal school but, despite this, we had managed to find him a small, private nursery school that was prepared to take him twice a week, which had been a huge relief for me, in particular. The less good news, however, was that his moods and behavior were still highly unpredictable and volatile. This meant that our lives were never straightforward.

Fraser is an adorable, loving little boy with a personality that seems to melt the hearts of everyone who meets him. But I’d be lying if I said that our life together had been a bed of roses, because it hadn’t. We had been through some tough and extremely testing times. We never quite knew what to expect nor quite what to do, especially if we changed his routine as we’d done today. All we could do was follow our instincts. Which was why Chris and I were driving along the Dee Valley, towards the small town of Aboyne, to meet the local organizer for the charity, Cats Protection.

I’ve been an animal lover since childhood. As a girl I’d play with rabbits, dogs, cats, horses—I didn’t care. That evening I’d looked enviously into the grounds of one of the grand Royal Deeside Estates where I knew you could ride horses, something I’d adored doing when I was younger and missed terribly now that I was a full-time mother.

Our family’s only pet at the moment was a cat, a rather portly and aging gray called Toby who we’d had for more than a decade, since before Fraser and Pippa were born. It was dear old Toby who had given me the idea for this evening’s journey into the unknown.

Toby was literally part of the furniture. He lay around the house, inanimate for most of the day, focused on the two main interests in his life: eating and sleeping.

For most of his young life, Fraser had taken very little interest in his surroundings or Toby. He was obsessed with anything that had wheels or spun around and could spend hours watching a spinning washing machine, playing with an old DVD player, or whirling the wheels of his upended stroller or a toy car, but beyond that very little seemed to engage him. Recently, however, I’d noticed that he was fascinated by Toby. He would lie alongside Toby while he snoozed, placing his head on the carpet so that he could stroke and try to communicate with him.

Toby hadn’t reciprocated the interest. For a while he tolerated the intrusion into his space but he’d slowly become more and more wary of Fraser, especially when he was upset. On a couple of occasions, Fraser had begun screaming over some minor change to the household routine sending Toby running upstairs for cover. Since then he’d become visibly scared of him and given him a wide berth. Sometimes now he would scamper away at the sight of Fraser approaching.

This didn’t really surprise me. I knew that Toby wasn’t a pet for a young child to play with, but Fraser’s behavior had set me thinking.

As the mother of an autistic child I knew I had to seize any opportunities and openings that came my way. They were few and far between, especially given where we lived, in an isolated house belonging to the Queen’s Scottish home, the Balmoral Estate, where Chris worked. There were no neighboring families and, for a long time, we hadn’t been able to go to any toddler groups or anything like that because Fraser didn’t cope with those kinds of environments very well. His lack of social skills always bothered me, so seeing Fraser with Toby had made me wonder whether a pet might be a positive influence on him. Interaction was interaction, even if it was with a cat rather than a human.

“I think he might like a little friend. I think it might bring him out of himself a bit more,” I said to Chris one evening over dinner. “Why don’t we try to find him a young cat that he can have a relationship with?”

We had been through so much already with Fraser that Chris, who is a very logical and grounded person, saw the flaws immediately.

“Are you sure?” he said. “Won’t a cat just get frightened by Fraser, like Toby?”

“What have we got to lose?” I replied. “If we get it from a charity or rescue center we can explain the situation and, if it doesn’t work, they would probably take the cat back.”

“I guess so,” said Chris, although I could tell he was unconvinced.

The following day I sent an email to Cats Protection, what used to be known as the Cats Protection League, via their main website. I explained that Fraser had autism and a muscle condition that made him immobile and we were looking for a “special” animal to be his friend. That was exactly the way I worded it, a “special” friend. I had no great expectation of such a creature even existing.

At first we didn’t get a reply. A part of me wondered whether they’d dismissed me as some kind of lunatic asking for a “special friend” for her “special” boy. But it turned out that the message had gone to the wrong branch. One morning I got a call suggesting that I contact the Deeside branch of Cats Protection which had, coincidentally, only been opened six months earlier.

So I sent them an email and was soon contacted by the organizer, a lady called Liz who lived twenty minutes or so away from us, near the town of Aboyne.

I could tell immediately that she understood what I was looking for.

“I’ve got a couple of cats that would be...

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Verlag
ATRIA
Erscheinungsdatum
2015
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1476797293
ISBN 13 
9781476797298
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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