Pussyfooting Around

This past Thursday before I left for the Creek House, I noticed that Miss Kitty's right-rear paw had a slight injury. She seemed to be okay and wasn't, at the time, favoring that foot.

Friday, my brother stopped by the house to feed Miss Kitty and my dog Penny and noticed that she was had a slight limp and that her paw seemed to be a little swollen.

Saturday, by the time I got home, the vet was closed and poor Miss Kitty's foot was really swollen and she was limping really bad. I knew the poor thing didn't feel well because she was uncharacteristically cuddly. She wanted to be close, which is not even close to normal for her.

I put Neosporin on her foot which she almost immediately licked off but it was better than doing nothing for her.

On Sunday her foot looked a little better but it was starting to ooze blood and goo. At this point, I knew she had an infection or an abscess but the color of her gums were still nice and pink and her nose was still cold and damp.

Yesterday morning I called the vet first thing and got an appointment for her to be looked at and treated. Her appointment was in the afternoon so that gave me time to develop a plan of action so that I could get her to the vet without incident.

Miss Kitty was laying on top of a table in the living and luckily the cat carrier was not in its usual place but was close enough by that I could sneak the carrier to her before she could get away.

Miss Kitty has figured out long ago that the carrier means either a very long car ride to the creek or a trip to a place where they stick needles in you, put foreign objects into your ears and worse yet, into your ass.

So, I sneak up on Miss Kitty with the carrier as quietly as I could but of course, when I opened the carrier, she was clued in and tried to hobble away. Thanks to her injury she was unable to escape and I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck to avoid being clawed and bitten, and put her into the carrier.

She immediately starts meowing that poor, pitiful, get me out of here meow and I picked her up and carted her off to the vet.

Miss Kitty is terrified of the vet and typically she will sit on the exam table, ejecting fur and drooling. Yes, drooling. Yesterday, rather than drool, Miss Kitty simply sat there ejecting fur, looking wide eyed because I think deep down she knew that she was about to go through something humiliating.

So after weighing her in at 11.5 pounds, the doctor comes into the room and the vet tech picks her up by the scruff of the neck, supporting her backside, so that the doc could examine her foot. It's at this point that Miss Kitty begins spitting and hissing and giving this really deep, "Don't fuck with me" growl.

They took her to the back to soak her foot in medicine and clean it up so he can have a better look. They also ran a Feline Leukemia and FIV (feline AIDS) test on her. I could hear her back there screaming and hissing and the occasional 'ouch' coming from an unsuspecting technician.

When they returned Miss Kitty she was wrapped up in a towel like a burrito and she was PISSED OFF! They put her on the table again and she sat there giving me the stink eye. Thinking that the ordeal was over, Miss Kitty began to settle back down again and I was petting her and she began to purr.

I felt bad for her as they had shaved her foot and squeezed some of the blood and goo out of the wound, which as I suspected, had abscessed and of course she got an injection of a nice, strong antibiotic. Things were calming down and Miss Kitty was getting calmer and calmer, then the doctor remembered that he forgot something......... to take her temperature.

At this point, I can imagine Miss Kitty laying there thinking that she managed to escape the vet office without having something shoved up her ass, and just as she thinks she's escaped that humiliation the vet raises her tail.

It was then that my cat stopped sounding like a cat and started sounding like a Tasmanian Devil. He raised her tail and she gave off this awful sound, he sticks the thermometer in and the sound suddenly becomes higher pitched. She starts hissing and spitting until it's over with.

After that, I put her back in her cage so she would have no doubt that it was all over with. $269.00 later, Miss Kitty is well on the mend and we know that she is Leukemia and FIV free.

She goes back in 2 weeks to get her shots, she's due anyway. Something tells me that I will have to figure something nice and tricky out to get her into her cage again. Should be fun.