The Tale Of Brave Sir Nicolas

Friday: Angie's mom calls me regarding something in her backyard underneath the lawn mower. I can hear her dogs going nuts in the background. She thinks maybe it's some kind of lizard or snake. We head over to her place and discover it's a cat. It looks half starved and can't walk, my guess is it was hit by a car and has dragged itself to this point. I gently pulled on his scruff, and the skin stayed sticking out which is a sign of dehydration. We take it to the Emergency Animal Clinic. At the clinic they run some blood work, and give the cat a once over. It tests negative for Feline Leukemia, and kidney and liver enzymes are normal. They still need to run x-rays as the cat has an obvious and serious injury to or near its rear left leg. They say he was definitely hit by a car. We leave the cat there over night with a promise from the staff that we will be updated on the cat's condition.

Saturday: After an early morning call from the clinic we learn that the cat, which we have since dubbed Sir Nicolas, has a broken pelvis and a broken leg. We arrive at the clinic shortly thereafter.

Before consultation, they let us see Nic. He is already a completely different cat than the scared, scrawny thing we left last night. He shows a very friendly and playful disposition, nipping our fingers and trying to hold our hands down so he can give them a serious licking. It is Nic's opinion that no amount of petting is too much for him, and he purrs constantly.

The doctor shows us the x-ray of Nic's leg. I don't know anything about reading x-rays, but I do know that your leg shouldn't be in about fifty different pieces. The only viable option is to amputate the leg, a procedure that will cost anywhere from one to two thousand dollars. A big thank you to Angie's mom goes here for covering the things they did charge us for.

At this point I'm thinking euthanasia is going to be the only course of action we can take since there was no way we could pay for the surgery, but the vet came up with a solution. She offered to perform the amputation for free on her own time (with a good old fashion neutering for good measure) if we agreed to foster Nic to recovery until the Animal Protective League can take him in.

There were a couple of surprises during and after the surgery. When the leg was removed yellow pus oozed out the wound. There was so much of it the vet told us that based on the amount of pus she would guess that Nic had been hit by the car around 7 - 10 days ago, and that he was lucky to be alive.

Sadly, she spoke too soon. A half hour after his surgery Sir Nicolas died. His heart stopped...Luckily they were able to revive him. Most likely he passed a blood clot, but they were able to get him ticking again by flushing his system with some kind of medication. They tell us he should be fine, and can go home on Sunday.

Sunday: The vet releases Sir Nicolas into our care. She gave us instructions for his pain meds and antibiotic, and he has an appointment to see our regular vet on 10/25. Until then he is confined to crate so his hip can mend properly. He seems to be okay with his new surroundings, and eats like a pig whenever we feed him.