Their Royal Highnesses
posted by peppermint at 7:30 AM
I posted back at the end of July about one of our cats (Mo) who was going in to be declawed at the ripe age of 2 (and the ripe weight of 12 pounds). I won't go over my mixed emotions all over again because it's moot now, the claws are gone and he's back to acting like royalty around the house again. As a matter of fact we've renamed both the cats in the past week - Mo is now "Princess" and Chivus is "Duchess" - because the two of them have been laying about the house as though they're on direct orders from the Queen Mother.
The veterinarian kept Mo for two days because with him weighing as much as he does they wanted to keep him off his feet as long as possible. I laughed hard when I hung up the phone because anyone who knows Mo would know that keeping him off his feet isn't exactly a problem. Getting him ON his feet is more of problem. Neither of the cats is much for this thing they call "exercise". Every once in a while one of them will get up and walk to the other side of the room, but then the physical exertion required to walk across the room dictates that they take a minimum 2 hour nap before moving again. But they kept him until Sunday evening and then I was allowed to bring him home - and I had him on pain meds, which he was surprisingly willing to take. (When I got him from a shelter in Indianapolis as a kitten he had an exceptionally vicious upper respiratory infection that required he take antibiotics a couple times a day and I almost lost both of my arms and possibly an eye in the battle).
That Sunday night that he first came back home we were watching television and when it came time to go to bed I reached down to pick him up off the floor to bring him to bed with us - because heaven forbid he would have had to walk in there himself - and he was down there chewing on his left paw and a big (for a cat) circle of bright red blood was soaking into the carpet underneath him. Since it was 11pm on a Sunday night we didn't have a whole lot of options available to us, so I crafted a make-shift bandage that consisted of a cut up rag, a 6-inch section from an Ace bandage and two ponytail holders that were tight enough to keep him from getting the whole thing off, but loose enough that he wouldn't need an amputation the next day. I'm the MacGyver of animal-care. We had to keep him in the bathroom that night with a litter box and his food and water dish until I could get him into the vet in the morning. And despite his best efforts, he never did manage to get that bandage chewed all the way off - which turned out to be a good thing, according to the vet, because it allowed it to clot enough that he didn't require stitches.
From what they could tell, and Mo wasn't giving up ANY information, some surgical glue had run down in-between two of the pads on his paw and it was probably bugging him to have those two pads stuck together. Since it was hard to get down in there to chew the glue out he basically just mangled the paw of his foot trying.
BUT - since the surgical glue was still down in there, and since now it was going to be all bothersome because of the injury, they needed to keep him away from the paw so he didn't open it up again and/or give himself a raging infection from messing with it. So he had to rock this look for a week:
It didn't interfere with his couch-laying schedule or his bird-watching schedule, but it sure freaked the other cat out.
And speaking of the other cat, Mo tends to be a camera hog because, in general, he has more personality and is the lead character in more funny stories. In the interest of fairness, though, here's a glamour shot of Chivus (aka "The Duchess") from this past weekend.
Mo is no longer wearing the collar. I actually didn't even keep it on him for the full week because I checked his paw every morning and after about 5 days that surgical glue had finally worked its way out. Plus they can't groom themselves with the big bell collar on, and Chivus basically ran screaming from the room every time Mo entered - so HE wasn't going to help. So after five days in the collar Mo was starting to smell a little ripe. After the collar came off he must have sat and worked on his hygiene for a solid hour, which is more energy than he usually expends in a day.
Every once in a while he'll stand next to the corner of the loveseat, where the tell-tale signs of the good old days still remain, but all-in-all he's no worse for the wear. Neither is our furniture.
The veterinarian kept Mo for two days because with him weighing as much as he does they wanted to keep him off his feet as long as possible. I laughed hard when I hung up the phone because anyone who knows Mo would know that keeping him off his feet isn't exactly a problem. Getting him ON his feet is more of problem. Neither of the cats is much for this thing they call "exercise". Every once in a while one of them will get up and walk to the other side of the room, but then the physical exertion required to walk across the room dictates that they take a minimum 2 hour nap before moving again. But they kept him until Sunday evening and then I was allowed to bring him home - and I had him on pain meds, which he was surprisingly willing to take. (When I got him from a shelter in Indianapolis as a kitten he had an exceptionally vicious upper respiratory infection that required he take antibiotics a couple times a day and I almost lost both of my arms and possibly an eye in the battle).
That Sunday night that he first came back home we were watching television and when it came time to go to bed I reached down to pick him up off the floor to bring him to bed with us - because heaven forbid he would have had to walk in there himself - and he was down there chewing on his left paw and a big (for a cat) circle of bright red blood was soaking into the carpet underneath him. Since it was 11pm on a Sunday night we didn't have a whole lot of options available to us, so I crafted a make-shift bandage that consisted of a cut up rag, a 6-inch section from an Ace bandage and two ponytail holders that were tight enough to keep him from getting the whole thing off, but loose enough that he wouldn't need an amputation the next day. I'm the MacGyver of animal-care. We had to keep him in the bathroom that night with a litter box and his food and water dish until I could get him into the vet in the morning. And despite his best efforts, he never did manage to get that bandage chewed all the way off - which turned out to be a good thing, according to the vet, because it allowed it to clot enough that he didn't require stitches.
From what they could tell, and Mo wasn't giving up ANY information, some surgical glue had run down in-between two of the pads on his paw and it was probably bugging him to have those two pads stuck together. Since it was hard to get down in there to chew the glue out he basically just mangled the paw of his foot trying.
BUT - since the surgical glue was still down in there, and since now it was going to be all bothersome because of the injury, they needed to keep him away from the paw so he didn't open it up again and/or give himself a raging infection from messing with it. So he had to rock this look for a week:
It didn't interfere with his couch-laying schedule or his bird-watching schedule, but it sure freaked the other cat out.
And speaking of the other cat, Mo tends to be a camera hog because, in general, he has more personality and is the lead character in more funny stories. In the interest of fairness, though, here's a glamour shot of Chivus (aka "The Duchess") from this past weekend.
Mo is no longer wearing the collar. I actually didn't even keep it on him for the full week because I checked his paw every morning and after about 5 days that surgical glue had finally worked its way out. Plus they can't groom themselves with the big bell collar on, and Chivus basically ran screaming from the room every time Mo entered - so HE wasn't going to help. So after five days in the collar Mo was starting to smell a little ripe. After the collar came off he must have sat and worked on his hygiene for a solid hour, which is more energy than he usually expends in a day.
Every once in a while he'll stand next to the corner of the loveseat, where the tell-tale signs of the good old days still remain, but all-in-all he's no worse for the wear. Neither is our furniture.
Labels: family, randomness
1 Comments:
Pictures of cats on the internet... how novel!
Just kidding. Awesome story, and I can never look at enough cute pictures of cats.
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