Prins is the baby of the house – a big baby! He is from Gala’s last litter and we never planned to have him to stay. Prins was the cheekiest and fastest of the litter. He was and is extremely curious. When he was 9 weeks old, I noticed that his little belly was rather hard, though he did not appear bothered. I talked about the problem with the vet and we controlled that he was not constipated. After a couple of days, I thought he should have a proper check-up. Our lovely family vet examined him and found that one of his kidneys was the size of a tangerine! Tom (our vet) felt that when he was so young, the most rational was to put the little guy to sleep but from the tears running down my cheeks he could see that he had to give me other alternatives. We agreed that if the kidney function results and other test were o.k., he would be operated on the following day. Everything was normal, even his kidney function. Prins’ operation, performed by our other excellent vet Stig, lasted 3 hours. Half an hour after the operation he was lively and charmed himself to the nurses at the clinic. It appears that Prins was born with two normal kidneys but one of them had no passage to the bladder.

My little Prins weighed around 1 kg at 10 weeks of age, when he had his operation. Now he is a giant, healthy, cheeky and very chatty Russian hunk, a fantastic hunter and has no idea that he only has one kidney! Prins has a good coat, a lovely elegant body type and the longest tail I have ever seen on a Russian Blue! But his ears could be a bit larger and his nose shorter.