Thousand Dollar Kitty

Last fall one of my cat’s suffered a hit and run. We didn’t find out about it until the vet who received him from animal control saw our lost cat notice on Craig’s List. It was three days between his disappearance and our finding him. In that time nothing was done about his injuries.

We ended up paying a thousand dollars to rebuild his hip and put pins in the broken bones in one front paw. The vet made it sound as if this would be all it would take, and that he could be expected to make a full recovery. It wasn’t until we’d already had all the work done and brought him home for a long convalescence that we learned it wasn’t the case.

Among the expected side effects (expected by the vet, not us) was nerve damage, loss of use of the back leg, permanent incontinence, and the need for further surgery. We learned all this only when he didn’t recover as quickly as we were told to expect.

He was supposed to have recovered enough in six weeks to come out of the cage they had us put him in. It took a two months. He was supposed to be moving around in the cage and use the cat box we put in the cage. We ended up turning the entire cage into a cat box.

By the time we got him out of the cage, we were seriously thinking we’d made a horrible mistake. If he never recovered, it would be our fault.

We got lucky. Once he was weened off the cage, he got more and more mobile. He still limps, and he insists on pooping and pissing all over the house, but it’s clear now that he will be all right if we don’t end up strangling him. So I guess it was all worth it after all.