Holiday Visitor

Some of you have expressed an interest in the past in hearing more about the feline rescue situations I keep finding myself embroiled in, so I thought I'd share some more about the latest. (This is what I had to cancel/reschedule that livestream for, if you happened to read that post.)

This poor fellow is a feral cat who's been visiting for meals regularly since summertime. Earlier this month, he vanished right before a snow storm. For about a week, I searched high and low for him, called shelters to see if they'd picked up a cat matching his description, and continued leaving meals out for him, just in case. I was pretty certain he stopped showing because - as is often the sad story with feral cats - some terrible fate had befallen him.  That ended up being partly true. 

To my relief, he re-materialized at 2am, five days before Christmas. I glimpsed him nestled on an electric warming mat I leave out in the colder months, waiting for a meal to appear.  Only as I watched through the window while he inhaled the food I set out did I realize something was up with his hind quarters. Then he stood up and his right rear leg just sort of...dangled there.  I spent the next blurry 12 hours trying to catch him (if you think a badly injured, 10lb feral cat can't outrun you and also level you in hand-to-paw combat, you'd be wrong).  Eventually some tuna and a humane trap did the trick. I suspect he had not eaten since he was injured, right around the time he initially vanished.

Anyway, he went straight to the vet from there. Diagnosis: Mangled rear ambulator with proximal pelvicular jankage  (aside from the obvious messy breaks, his hip was dislocated and the acetabulum was fractured too).  It's likely he was hit by a car. It became quickly obvious that if euthanasia wasn't the solution (I simply couldn't, not after he'd survived all this), amputation was going to be the least fraught, traumatic and prolonged way to try to deal with this.  No one had any surgery slots open before the holiday week, though, of course, so he camped out in my bathroom for the duration, hopped up on goofballs (or, well, dosed with a strong analgesic, at least).

Aaand, he just had his surgery today!  He was vaccinated, neutered, micro-chipped and ear-tipped to boot, and though he's still looking a bit spacey (who wouldn't after losing that many parts?), he seems relatively comfortable, back in the bathroom for now. His bloodwork indicates he's in good health and he's been eating well, so here's hoping for a speedy recovery. I suspect he's not in the mood for a photo shoot right now, but I'll follow up with more pictures of him at some other time.

The next challenge:  What to do with a tripod wild boi?  I've got to try to find a home for him. As pleased as I'd be to allow him to stay here and give the domestic life a taste, I'm at max capacity with all these displaced-animals-turned-roommates. 

-----------------------------

By the way, comic is incoming!  Working to have it ready for New Years.