Another Saturday cat picture, this time a terrifying action shot of Bea:

Yaaa!

Bea compared to the Carolina Panthers logo:

Also fun, and less scary, check out Sir Purr, the Carolina Panthers’ mascot.  He claims to lead the league in hugs Purr appearance*.

*Ha-ha!  Also, awwww.

On this Saturday, enjoy a picture of my cat Artie looking dapper in his bow tie:

There is a story, as told visually here.  But the written version is:  we bought him this bow tie at Target because we thought it would be funny and it cost I think $3.  We got it home, tried to put it on him, got a single glorious picture of him looking really suave, then he went berserk and we had to take it off.  Occasionally I threaten to put it back on him but have never actually tried.

Artie’s FHO on Wednesday went well for the most part.  No complications or anything weird.  We weren’t sure if he had actually broken a bone or if there was some kind of degeneration, but turns out it was broken.  Who knows how–a clumsy landing, one would guess.  But he came through the procedure all right.

The vet went berserk shaving the poor little guy.  I think normally when pets have something done they get shaved around the area.  Artie got shaved pretty much all over one side from his middle to his tail.  The back left leg (the one operated on) got shaved down to this odd little boot-looking remainder on his foot.  The scrawny hairless cat leg then puffy foot looks unfortunately like this terrible current fashion trend of Ugg boots and shorts.  I kind of want to post a picture but I kind of don’t want to shame Artie.  Anyway, I don’t know why they went so overboard on the shaving other than being extra cautious about sterility.

We took him home for the night Wednesday but that’s when things got a little dicey.  He had a catheter tube and bandage still on one paw just in case, but he pretty much relentlessly worked it out whenever we left him alone and ended up with the thing dangling out and a little blood on his bandage.  He was also more preoccupied with his stitches than he should have been.  So we ended up taking him to the after-hours vet, and didn’t get home and settled to bed until midnight, but it was worth the trip.  They cleaned up his paw and outfitted him with the dreaded e-collar (AKA the pet cone, and they really need less sad-looking dogs on that Wikipedia page).  He obviously doesn’t like it much but it’s keeping us from worrying about his stitches.

At this point we’re in recovery mode.  He’s handling his meds well (and we only have a few more days of lots of drugs), he’s eating and using his box, and is even submitting to his physical therapy regimen for at least a few minutes.  That’s just as hard on us: twice a day I have to hold him down (and that little dude is strong for a creature weighing13 pounds) and K gently stretches out his back leg.  It doesn’t feel good, but I think he hates being held down just as much.  Mostly the issue is that he’s perking up a lot and is getting bored and lonely in the confined bedroom we’re keeping him in.  We have to keep him confined for two full weeks so the tissues can heal, and two days in that seems like a looong time.  Whenever we come in, he purrs like crazy and limps around trying to rub up against us a lot.  Then when we leave he digs at the door to get out.  Luckily he doesn’t have much stamina yet and hasn’t gotten up enough strength to spend a lot of time meowling.  But we need to leave him alone as much as possible to keep him calm.  He doesn’t want to lay around all day, but that’s what he’s got to do.

On top of this, K has a nasty cold, and we’re both stressed out and behind on sleep.  All in all, not a fun week around the house but we’re getting through it.

Strange week on the horizon.  Our cat Artie hurt his hip and has to undergo a femoral head ostectomy.

Last Saturday he wasn’t himself.  Instead of hanging around the porch in the morning, he was just lying in the basement. Sometime in the afternoon we checked on him because he hadn’t been upstairs all day.  He tried to go back up the stairs to get away from us but he was gimpy.  I’m not sure what might have happened.  Could have been anything.  He’s notoriously clumsy.  When he jumps off furniture he lands with a thud that sounds like someone just dropped a bowling ball.  And generally he’s kind of accident-prone anyway.  He always seems to be on the wrong side of a door that’s opening up, or getting accidentally stepped on, or falling off his cat tower in playful exuberance.  We joke a lot that he’s the most Extreme! cat we know, and have even invented a unit of measurement to describe his baseline extremeness, 1 Artie, which would be equivalent to, say, a BMX stunt rider doing a backflip off a cliff while chugging a Mountain Dew.  But he was down to about 0.3 Arties and we were a bit worried.

We were hoping it would clear up within a few days because he’d just been to a vet a few weeks back and obviously superfluous trips are worth avoiding for his sake and ours.  But it didn’t, so I brought him in for a checkup Tuesday afternoon.  Even though he’d been getting around the house a lot more, he was still in some pain and they needed to take x-rays.  Those revealed either a break or some general deterioration at the head of his femur (the ball joint that connects to his hip).  Not the kind of thing that would heal up on its own.

So, an FHO.  He’s going in Wednesday.  They remove the head of the femur and apparently the muscles and scar tissue are enough to keep the joint working normally in small animals.  It won’t be a fun time and it’ll be a while before he’s back to full strength.  Nor is it cheap, but we’ll let him pay off his debt at a reasonable interest rate. The good news is that he should recover completely and have a lot of years of normal activity ahead.

Hopefully this normal activity will be him learning to jump down from things a little more gracefully and not hurting himself again.  Wishing him a good week and speedy recovery.