The scrawny little cow-colored kitten above is my MooMoo
(named for the cow resemblance). He's about 5 months old now
(bigger than the picture above, but apparently my digital camera is too
ancient a species for Windows Vista, which poses a whole new aggravation
with my new computer).
On Friday night, I had just finished heating up
Thanksgiving leftovers, and I was arranging them on a plate when I heard
an awful howling sound coming from one of the bedrooms. I've heard
that sound before: in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzogovina, I was walking
down a dirt road and a driver decided not to brake for a cat. He
hit the cat and just kept going, and the cat went limping off with a
broken leg and a piercing yet gutteral cry.
I happened to see from the corner of my eye before the
howl came, MooMoo standing on top of an end table I have with a lid on
it. He was watching my big cat Rusty run by, and as he watched, he
slipped and lost his balance. That was when I looked back down and
the crying started.
So I hurry into the bedroom. The end table that he
was on was on top of a box because of rearranging things, and of course
cats always want to climb up as high as they can when they think you're
not looking. The end table has a lid for storage inside, and the
lid has a hook latch that opens and closes.
When MooMoo fell, the steel hook came unlatched and got
stuck in between his toes, in a way that I could not figure out
whatsoever. It was a horrible experience.
He was hissing, howling, and emitting some sort of fear
smell that made me sick, and for almost five minutes it seemed, I
could not get him unhooked. His paw was twisted entirely
around the wrong way, and it was hurting him so much that when I tried
to pull out the hook he would jump and fall with his weight on the paw -
oh my God, I was shaking like a dead leaf, I was so terrified.
My other two cats start running around crying. Darko
tried to help and comes rushing over with a pair of kitchen scissors to
try and cut through the hook (that doesn't work on steel, FYI), because
we could not figure out how to get it out of his paw - he bit us both so
hard that it went through our fingers and came out the other side.
But he never bites, he couldn't stop himself, he was in
sheer terror. Finally Darko figured out which way the hook
was caught, because it was this nightmare of a puzzle we couldn't
untwist - and MooMoo shot under the bed.
He couldn't walk on that paw; I couldn't see anything
broken or bleeding but it was getting red and swollen right away, and he
was hopping to avoid putting weight on it when he finally came out from
under the bed. I felt so, so sorry for him. I put him in his
little carrier and took him to the Emergency Animal Clinic at 8:00
p.m.
It turned out that he hadn't broken anything, at least I
don't think so, because the vet felt all of his toes and bones in his
paw and leg and said it all felt good, and assured me that if anything
was broken he wouldn't let her touch it. I asked her for pain
medication for him for the next couple of days, because I saw how bad
that twisted with my own eyes and I know he'll be sore.
She acted like she almost didn't want to give it to me -
which kind of rubs me the wrong way because you know a doctor would tell
you to take Advil or Tylenol if you had any pain, but animals cannot
take that...there are no over-the-counter pain meds for cats, and MooMoo
can't tell me if he's hurting (unless he starts howling again, in which
case, I am taking him straight back to the vet!).
Anyways, we ended up home about 2 1/2 hours later -
there were actually quite a few animals there at that hour on the
holiday weekend for emergencies, including a woman whose dog ate part of
a raw turkey and stuffing the day before and she was afraid he got
poisoned because he was coughing the next day.
MooMoo has some kitty morphine, which makes him purr
spurradically like popping corn, and everyone is okay. Although my
mouse finger is swollen from those sharp little teeth. Thank God
it turned out alright.
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