A certain song from my days as a young camper on the shores of Lake Minnetonka has been playing in my head all day. … the cat came back– the very next day, oh– the cat came back– they thought she was a gonner, but– the cat came back. Etc.
Yesterday morning I was in the process of rounding up Lena dog when I saw Zane Grey, sitting on the crest of a hill a little ways from the house. Luckily Lena didn't see her and I was able to contain her in the house before the situation got any more complicated. I approached Zane Grey, talking to her and meowing in a familiar way, and she replied. But as I neared her, I could see that she was hurt. I tried to watch her briefly to assess the damage. First off her right front leg seemed to be broken. She would take a step on that paw and then just topple over. And then, her tail… oh boy. In my 40 long years of life I'm not sure when I've seen anything more disturbing than that tail. A bare, skinned, jagged, broken stick of bones and soft tissue. I won't say any more. Suffice it to say that tail amputation immediately came to mind as a must.
But she could live without her tail. In other ways, she seemed to be fairly normal. Her eyes were bright, she responded normally, and her fur looked okay. I went inside to get her some food and to get my cat carrier, thinking I would catch her and take her to the vet. It was slightly complicated with the baby helping. Zane Grey hid under the wood pile and I left her a dish of canned food to eat while I got the baby, luckily, to take a short nap. She was extremely hungry. After a while, and after some tuna in addition to the canned food, I managed to get her out of the wood pile and into the crate. Only when I picked her up did I realize that she was skeletal, emaciated, fur and bone. My fantasy of her happily living in a log someplace and getting fat on small rodents evaporated. It was replaced by a new image: she left here in early July, immediately got her tail caught in a trap or something like that, and has spent the last ten weeks slowly starving to death. I'm very impressed with her that she made it home.
I spoke with the local vet down the way, and she referred me to the veterinary emergency room the next town over. I packed up baby and cat and headed over. The initial exam was what I expected– severe dehydration, emaciation, needs tail amputated as soon as she's stable enough for surgery. But her right paw seemed okay, and maybe it was just that she was so weak she couldn't support her weight. I don't know. That piece is still unclear.
However, a vet came in shortly and examined her more thoroughly. He said that often with these severe tail injuries there is nerve damage to the hind end. Since she can walk, that leaves the pee and poop aspect of it. Seems that sometimes a cat can end up with fecal incontinence, or this thing where they can't empty their own bladders and need someone to empty them manually four times a day. (oh dear god!) Also he brought up the issues of possible kidney damage from the dehydration, or other organ damage. We agreed to take 24 hours, rehydrate, stabilize her, do some blood work, and then talk tomorrow afternoon. (Meaning today? Saturday… My days are all out of whack because Elias and I have been sleeping terribly the last few days, due to his nighttime cough. I was doing all this cat stuff on maybe three hours sleep. And now it's almost 5:00 a.m. and I'm awake, even though he's asleep, and there's nothing more maddening than that.)
On the way home I ran through the possibilities: she could need to be put to sleep due to any number of serious problems. If her bladder had ruptured, or her kidneys were failing, or she would need me to express her bladder four times a day for the rest of her life, I think I would put her to sleep. But if it was just a case of amputate the tail and nurse her back to health in terms of food, I could deal with that. Shortly the vet called me. He said she has no "anal tone" which to him suggests that she will be fecally incontinent for the rest of her life. "Living with that with kids would be real hard," he said. He wanted to know whether I wanted to call it quits right there. I said that I needed some time to think about it.
Upon reflection, her previous house-soiling problems worked to her advantage on this one. I had already established her a life in the basement, and didn't really picture her in our living space ever again anyway. And then I thought about all she's been through, I mean, the suffering, pain, and fear, and how heroically she made it home to me. I thought, how could I KILL her, after all that? No, I would give her a chance. I called the vet back and said to go ahead with the blood work to see if there's anything else going on, but that the pooping thing wasn't a deal-breaker for me.
I may regret this!!
Later on in the evening I got a call from the normal non-emergency vet, who said she would perform the surgery this morning. She said she's doing well, the rest of her blood work was normal, and the tail must go as soon as possible. I asked whether she thought that the cat could get through this, and go on to basically have a normal life. She said, yes, pretty much, except for the pooping thing. And then she said, "Isn't this a MIRACLE? That she made it home? I really think this is just a miracle."
On the one hand I think so too. I think, my god, the poor little thing. What she's been through, how close she has been to the brink, how briefly we lived here before she disappeared, and yet she got herself back here, alive. On the other hand I think: great, a tail-less, poop-spewing cat and a huge vet bill. I think, oh god, like I need a complicated project to fill my empty idle hours!
But what can you do? She's here, she needs help, and when you get right down to it, she's my cat. My first reaction when I saw her was tremendous relief. I'm glad she made it home.