It sure has been way too long since I've written and I will have to keep this short since I'm recovering from carpal tunnel surgery and typing is a bear.
So, hubby and I went on vacation and came back to discover that during their usual rough play, Casey bit Poly. The boarder took her to his vet and took all the necessary precautions. She was on an anti-inflammatory as well as an antibiotic, which just finished a few days ago. He got her in just the "right" place. Evidently her neck blew up to the size of a baseball! I can't even imagine. I would be in tears for her. I know that it was innocent rough-housing. Heck, I've been bitten by one of them when I tried to separate them. Well, it was two weeks ago today that we returned and she had to go see the vet. While the lump is much, much smaller than it was, it's still there and sizable (than if there was nothing there). The vet took a quick sample and decided that it was a mucus gland thing. She said to give it a few more weeks since she isn't acting differently than usual, is sleeping and eating fine, etc. If it doesn't clear up in 2-3 weeks, we may be talking surgery - significant surgery. Now, our cat Nikki (an only child) had more surgery in her little life than I can deal with remembering. Poly is NO LESS IMPORTANT than Nikki. We do have to consider that this is major surgery. They don't do it at our vet's office and would have to refer to a specialist. It is a practice of specialists we've seen before with Nikki's health problems. I just pray that the lump shrinks and even better, disappears altogether. We feared what Casey, being the tricky thing that is is, would do, so we took him with us. He got all worked up, of course, but was more than happy to go back to the car.
Also when we got home, we found that one of our cats was missing. The basement door had mysteriously opened while we were gone and the kitty sitter noted that it was open whichever day she came in and saw it. The sitter has never, ever seen the kitties. They hide from her, so she didn't think twice about not seeing him. Between my husband and myself, we went down to the basement more than a dozen times, opened every drawer, door, cabinet, and closet, as well as under all of the aforementioned, all to no avail. I was beside myself. Not only was I a wreck, but his sister would stand on the steps at night and just holler at us - every night. We knew she wouldn't last long without him. We've always said that we feel less guilty that they stay upstairs since they have each other. Anyway, we called the 2 local SPCAs, local vets and posted all over social media. We wracked our brains as to how and when he would have gotten out. We hung posters all over the neighborhood. The worst case scenarios kept running through my mind as we drove around the neighborhood at dusk yelling his name. Someone on hub's Facebook page commented about having taken all the drawers out of her bureau before finally finding her baby. Well, it gave us the idea to hunt for our baby there. We didn't even start with our own, master bedroom furniture. We went into the basement, in the far corner, way, way back, tucked away to my bureau from childhood. Hub started pulling out drawers and almost immediately found the little stinker. My first question was "is he alive?" The poor guy could have gone as long as 5 days without food or water - we're not sure exactly when he got down there. Hub worked to pull him out, because of course he was in the furthest spot possible. Once he was back upstairs, he had food and water and hopped right back into his routine, starting with waiting for me at bedtime when we snuggle. When we called our vet to put out a "BOLO" on Bert, they gave us a site to reach out to, which led to the vet putting up a "missing kitty" sign in their office. When we were there today with Poly, we got to tell them they can take it down! It was a great feeling - and they said how excited they are when they get to take one down!
Now my hand is about to fall off, so I have to stop typing. Those have been our critter adventures of late.
