‘I was diagnosed with leukaemia aged 15 – my cat knew something was wrong before I did’

A woman who was diagnosed with leukaemia at 15 and then relapsed at 18 said she believes her cat “detected” her cancer “before anyone else” did, including herself.

Sophie Hilgers, now 20, a bartender from Winchester in Hampshire, said her family’s orange cat, Arthur, was “never that bothered” about her, but he suddenly started to get “really clingy” with her at the start of 2021.

She did not really think anything of it at the time, but by May 2021, Sophie said she started developing symptoms of a cough that became so severe she would vomit, as well as fatigue, aches in her legs, a high temperature, and a fast heart rate.

Despite going to her GP up to eight times over two months, Sophie said she was prescribed antibiotics on two separate occasions, but “things didn’t improve” and she claimed that doctors “did not know how to help” her.

It was not until a nurse practitioner did some “basic tests” that Sophie said she was urgently admitted to Winchester Hospital, where she had more tests done, before she had a seizure and had to be induced into a coma for five days.

When she woke up at the end of July, Sophie was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) which she said she was “shocked” about but it “made sense” to her.

Sophie said she had seven months of treatment and enjoyed a period of remission, where Arthur became “completely disinterested” in her again, until just before she started experiencing symptoms again in April 2024, aged 18.

She was officially declared to have relapsed shortly afterwards and underwent immunotherapy treatment and CAR-T cell therapy, before she found out she was in remission again in December 2024.

Sophie told PA Real Life: “As I got more ill, (Arthur) only spent time with me and nobody else.

“I could pick him up and he would put his arm around me and almost hug me.

“He’d let me do anything to him, when he usually would have run off, but he stuck with me.

“He definitely knew (I had cancer) before anyone else did,” she added.

Sophie’s family got Arthur in 2017 and she said he was the most “laid back cat ever” and he loved to eat tuna to the point where “he had memorised the sound the tin made” before it was even fully open.

But Sophie said she immediately noticed that “he didn’t really like” her that much and would never “come and sit” with her.

That is, until the beginning of 2021, a “whole month” before Sophie said she started experiencing cancer symptoms.

She said: “He started to be really clingy and he wouldn’t leave me alone at all.

“He was following me around, which really wasn’t normal.”

She said her symptoms started around May 28 with a cough and she assumed it was Covid-19, so she did a test but it came back negative.

Within a week of her cough not improving, Sophie said she went to her GP and was prescribed antibiotics that “didn’t work”.

She went back for medical interventions a total of up to eight times over almost two months, but Sophie said doctors did not do any tests and “just didn’t know how to help” so she felt like there was “no real point in going”.

Sophie said: “I had a high heart rate and temperature, and I couldn’t eat or drink anything because it would all just come back up.

“I would be in bed most of the day and just get up for two or three hours.”

By this point, Sophie said Arthur “wouldn’t leave” her alone.

Things escalated when Sophie said she tried to go to her school prom in late July but she had to go home after “less than an hour” because she was “so unwell”.

The next morning, Sophie’s dad took her to a nurse practitioner, who did some tests and urged her to go to hospital, where she was admitted and stayed overnight.

Sophie explained what happened when she woke up: “I felt strange so I tried to get out of bed, but I (had) a seizure and my front teeth were smashed out on the floor.

“It was extremely difficult for my dad… (because) he saw me seizing on the floor, covered in blood from my teeth.”

She was placed in a coma and woke up at the end of July, where doctors told Sophie she had the blood cancer, ALL.

Sophie said: “(I felt) relief, after nearly two months of being quite unwell and going back and forth to the doctors, and them not knowing what’s wrong.”

Three weeks later, she was transferred to the charity Teenage Cancer Trust’s unit, where she spent seven months as an inpatient receiving chemotherapy, before she was able to go home at the beginning of 2022.

As the cancer had not fully left her body by that point, Sophie noticed Arthur was still “clingy” with her, then went on to describe one particular moment.

“When my treatment line got infected, he seemed to know,” Sophie said. “I was laid in bed feeling really unwell when he got on my chest and wouldn’t stop meowing at me.

“I tried to put him outside my room, but he just ran back and started meowing non-stop at me again.

“So, I took my temperature and it had spiked.

“I then went to hospital where they found I had sepsis, but it was at a stage where it was quite treatable.

“I was in hospital for two weeks (at) that time, but it could have been worse.”

When Sophie was given the all-clear in November 2023, she noticed Arthur “went back to being completely disinterested” in her.

But just six months later, Sophie noticed: “Just before we found out I had relapsed, he started being really clingy and meowing at me again and being affectionate.”

Shortly afterwards, follow-up tests revealed Sophie said it “wasn’t a surprise or shocking” for her to find out her cancer had returned.

She said she was admitted to hospital and started immunotherapy treatment and CAR-T cell therapy, which finished at the end of October 2024 and she was declared cancer-free in December.

After this, Sophie said Arthur “wasn’t how he was” when she was ill, but he “definitely felt like” her cat.

She added: “He would just be with me… which was really nice actually.”

Sophie made a TikTok all about Arthur which she said “blew up” and got two million likes.

In November 2025, Arthur passed away due to complications after his own cancer diagnosis, but Sophie remembered that she and Arthur were on the same steroid treatment at the same time.

On the day the family put Arthur to sleep, Sophie recalled: “I got home… and he wouldn’t come for my mum or my dad, but he would for me.

“So I picked him up and he hugged me like he did with his arm around me.

“Then my mum and dad took him to the vet, but I wasn’t with him because that would have been really sad.”

A year and a half into her remission, Sophie said she is “feeling really well now”, but she will always remember Arthur in her cancer journey.

Sophie is working with Teenage Cancer Trust to raise awareness of the need for the faster diagnosis of cancer in young people: www.teenagecancertrust.org