To recap: roughly a month ago Maggie went missing for two days. Now, for many cats, that would be standard behaviour, but not for any cat of mine. And Maggie was especially faithful - at least to her mealtimes, if nothing else! The first evening, Boyfriend and I went out on our bikes calling for her, since adult cats can roam six city blocks and we were going with the idea that she was just out having a good time.
By the next evening I figured if she had been able to come home, she would have. So I brought my flashlight and went sneaking into the neighbourhood's back yards, intending to shine my light into all their sheds and listen at their garage doors for meowing.
In the very first back yard I had access to three sheds, and while I was calling her name at the third one, I heard a meow behind me, turned and saw Maggie coming toward me.
Stiffly. Very, very stiffly, and looking confused. I picked her up and brought her inside and put her down. She had cried when I picked her up. She wandered from room to room in the house as if she didn't understand something and cried as she curled up in a ball in her basket. Boyfriend said let's go to the vet, this cat is in pain.
And there began a month I hope I never have to repeat, and I'm pretty sure the cat wouldn't want to repeat it, either! The vet quickly realized her tail would need to be amputated - she had an elongation injury it seemed, and had no more control over her tail.
But the other problem was life-threatening: Maggie could not urinate on her own, and seemed to have only partial sensation around the anus. She needed to be emptied two or three times a day, manually, which basically means you squeeze the bejeezus out of your cat.
It hurt her, and it was possible we were damaging her by doing this. See, the sphincter was closed tight - and they said she didn't have the muscle tone they were expecting when they would palpate her. At first they said not to take the tail off, since why put her through surgery if she would never be capable of emptying herself. So we had her home for a few days, walking on a leash, taking her twice a day to the vet to be emptied, trying to give her precious time to heal.
In desperation I asked if massage or acupuncture would help her regain control, (and those who know me well know that was severe desperation on my part!) and my vet referred me to a veterinary acupuncturist who works at the DMV in Lachine.
The DMV? Well, I don't know what the "D" stands for, but the "M" is for medical, and the "V" is for veterinary. It's a veterinary super-hospital, and a whole bunch of specialists practice there.
At her second acupuncture treatment, the vet who was performing the acupuncture ran upstairs to consult with the neurologist and got me a consultation with her that same day.
And that's when things turned around. The neurologist said get rid of the tail, put a catheter into the bladder and give her bladder a full 7 days to rest. After the catheter came out, we were to put her on meds that alternately relaxed the bladder sphincter and made the muscles in the bladder contract.
This of course meant hospitalization, staying put in a cage, and wearing a collar, for the cat.
Now, I don't know if you've ever seen a dog in a collar. They're pretty unhappy about the prospect. They bump into things and get stuck on stairs. But a pussy-cat, who is used to grooming itself every ten minutes, is in a state of utter, total, and abject misery in a collar.
I grit my teeth. She's young cat, she's an affectionate cat who enjoys human company, who likes interacting with people. I was going to do what had to be done, even if it meant a month in a collar for her. Over her whole lifespan - another 16 to 20 years I hope - a month turns out to be a relatively short time.
It's just that you can't tell the cat that it's only a month. You can't explain to them what's happening, why you're doing all this to them. All they know is, they're stuck in a cage and can smell themselves more each day, but can't do anything about it. To them, they're being tortured. Oh, and pills are being rammed down their throats too. I mean, we people don't enjoy our hospital stays, and at least we know why we're there and how long we are likely to remain, and at least we can scratch ourselves where we itch!
So I went to visit her every day. For fifteen short minutes each day, the collar would come off and she could lick herself - though not the stitches or the catheter. I'd brush her, and take her out to look out a window for a minute or two. Then it was back in the cage with the collar for another day.
I was going on grit and faith alone. The people at my home vet kept shaking their heads and reminding me they didn't think this was going to work, that they had never seen a cat so injured recover bladder and bowel control.
My counsellor had been trying to get me to come up with a word to meditate on each day, to help me relieve stress. It was at this point that Boyfriend wrote the word "faith" up on our whiteboard.
And it really took faith to go through with this. There were no guarantees the treatment would work, but if anything was certain, there would be a helluva vet bill to pay. All on Mastercard, of course. Ka-ching ka-ching. I had to have faith that my employment would continue, that I would be able to pay off the bills.
And I had to question my priorities. Was this really an emergency? Hubby pointed out that there are thousands of deserving, homeless kitties in Montreal, any one of which would have been thrilled to eat my homemade food and be a part of my family. I put off going to Louisiana to visit my father for years because I didn't want to run up a huge Mastercard bill. Now here I was, six months later, doing exactly that, for a cat.
I was talking to a friend at work when I accidentally said the words that helped cement my decision. It all boils down to this: do you consider cats and dogs disposable?
I can't help every kitty, but I can take care of the ones in my charge, and give them every chance to lead a happy and healthy life.
Throughout this past month I have been praying for a miracle. There is no other way to describe it. I needed - Maggie needed - a miracle to happen. She needed to regain bladder and bowel control after a terrible injury.
I kept explaining my position to the Universe/Great Mother/God. In the grand scheme of all the miracles that we'll need to house the homeless, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, stop wars, end poverty and save the species of the earth, what I was asking for was a very small miracle indeed. Un petit rien, in fact. In Sunday School I sang "God sees the little sparrow fall, it meets his tender view..." Well, my kitty needed a small miracle.
Last Thursday night, they removed the catheter and started the bladder meds. Friday morning the vet examined her, palpated the bladder and was stunned to feel muscle tone. She squeezed the bladder and it emptied easily, without hurting the cat. And a half hour later, while she was busy examining other animals, the technician came running to her to say that there was urine in Maggie's litterbox.
The whole hospital apparently lit up. And when I went for my daily visit, I lit up too! I was going away for my quilting retreat, and Boyfriend was taking over daily visitation duties. But for the first time in a month, we had hope. Just before I left for the retreat, I wrote "hope" up on our whiteboard.
Today she came home. Oh, she's got pills to rival any octogenarian. And she can't go outside on her own - we put her on a leash, so that severely curtails her fun. No pun intended! I'm sure the whole month she was in the hospital she was thinking, "Just let me go home, let me go outside and play in the sun! Let me just be able to lick my own ***!"
And she goes back in a week for more tests. But we're over the worst of it.
Her tiny miracle has happened - I'm changing her name to "Miracle Maggie." And the word on the whiteboard is "THANKS!"
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