cat’s anal tone superb

 I know you'll be as pleased as we are to learn of the cat's anal tone. It's perfect! Really there's not a thing wrong with it. The bleak prognosis of a lifetime of fecal incontinence has not been at all the case. Nor the business about manually expressing her bladder four times a day from now on. Instead, she's using her litter box with scrupulous perfection, and all her pee-poop parts are seemingly undamaged by her ordeal.

I picked her up on Sunday morning from the very comprehensive veterinary hospital (veterinary opthalmologist… veterinary oncologist… veterinary cardiologist… etc). She was alert, but looked and still looks frankly ridiculous. You think she looked funny when she had the lion cut? Well, you should see her wearing an Elizabethan collar, and with her once beautiful ostrich-plume tail reduced to a bald sewn-up little Franken-stump. 

Okay, it would be funny if it were not so pathetic looking.

Okay, it would be heartbreaking, if it were not a million times better than the way I found her. The horrible broken stick tail she's been dragging around for months is gone. She's no longer literally about to die of starvation. In fact, she's really, really, really happy.  She's bright and perky, mostly lying around in her heated cat bed and purring, only occasionally lifting up her head to eat some more delicious premium cat food. 

My mom has been here this weekend and after surveying the geography of our new place, formulated this very plausible explanation of what happened: the cat was lying in the driveway under a car the day she disappeared (first weekend in July). Someone drove away, crushing her tail without realizing it. In terror and excruciating pain, she ran into the nearest hiding place, the garage. There she found some way to get under the garage into a crawl space. Whereupon she hid there in terror and pain for ten weeks, occasionally drinking rain water or eating a mouse or bug if it walked right up to her. When I searched the garage (of course I did– I searched everywhere), instead of meowing for help, she heard my feet clomp-clomping over her head and made herself as small and quiet as possible. (She's always been somewhat agoraphobic and this experience did her no good.) Until finally, on Friday, on the brink of dying of starvation, she came out. There I found her, sitting on the grass near the garage, almost too weak to walk. (I thought her foot was broken, but it was just that she was collapsing with the starvation and dehydration.) 

Yes– I think this all fits together well. It was so abrupt, the way she disappeared. Not at all like a cat who was happily roaming the woods and living on chipmunks. I think a cat like that would have gone for a few days, come home, gone for a few more days, come home, etc., more working up to her new life in the woods. Not just flat out vanishing…

Anyway, her prognosis is really good. She may come to have a fluffy bunny rabbit sort of tail. But the broken tail and the starvation are her only problems, both on the mend. We've had our differences in the past, lord knows, but she's just so happy and so relieved to have her long nightmare behind her that she's incredibly affectionate. Humans! They're wonderful! That's her new attitude. I feel just terrible thinking about what she's gone through and so glad that she made it back to the fold before winter. (I think the first frost would have killed her– there just is no there there on her.)

It's been really busy the past few days, but when I get time I'll post some photos of this wonder kitty. It is a miracle that she survived all this, it really is. Right now she's living in Lena's big dog crate, with litter box and bed and food in it, but we have it the real house rather than down in the basement. I put her there because she needed a lot of care and it was easier on me, but I think it's helping her recovery a lot to be included in the family again. We come over and pet her frequently. (Elias calls her Lena, as he does all members of the animal kingdom.) We're a far cry from releasing her back into the house, but for the moment it's working well.  Maybe some day… eventually.. she'll be our real stumpy-tailed house cat! we do have mice she could help with..