Merry and Samwise: How a sister’s love saved a life
My husband and I started fostering kittens through a kitten rescue in 2020. In July 2020, we took in 4 kittens that were 10 days old that required us to bottle feed them every 4 hours. As they got older, siblings Pippin and Frodo were adopted but we got attached to Merry and Samwise and adopted them together.
In August 2025, we came home from a week-long vacation to find Merry lethargic and extremely cold (96 degrees). Our pet sitter had noticed Merry not eating well that day but nothing extremely concerning requiring vet attention. We quickly rushed Merry to an emergency vet. After several diagnostics, it was discovered that Merry had congestive heart failure caused by HCM. The vet tried for several days to stabilize her, but she could never regain her ability to maintain her body temperature. After 3 days of hospitalization, we made the dreadful decision to let her go. Merry had displayed zero symptoms of HCM before this event.
In November 2025, we were finally financially and emotionally healed enough to start checking on her brother Samwise. A ProBNP blood test, a test that checks the blood for a biomarker that indicates heart stress, came back extremely elevated. Samwise had an echocardiogram in December 2025 confirming that he was stage B1 HCM. His left ventricle has wall thickening but it has yet to affect his left atrium. Samwise was immediately prescribed clopidogrel and the newly approved sirolimus. He is currently on week 10 of the new medicine and goes back for another echocardiogram in June 2026.
I reached out to the adopters of their siblings Pippin and Frodo. We sadly learned that Pippin passed away in 2024 from sudden collapse, which I can only assume was caused by HCM. The brother Frodo had his ProBNP test, and it luckily came back normal so they will continue annual checks.
Even though Merry was a smaller 8 lb cat compared to her brother Samwise at 11.5 lbs she was always his protector. If any other cat tried to mess with Samwise, Merry was there to protect him. My husband and I like to think that this was Merry's final way of protecting her brother.
-Kaley
