Heidi's Fascinations

Flower got her stitches removed today. And she no longer has to wear the cone. She is able to start to put weight on her operated leg and doesn't drag her little foot along behind her. The vet says she is doing "as well as we could hope for her". This is good! She still has to have medicine -- they found a bit too many red blood cells in her stool (they said something about swelling), but she is very much doing better.

I'll post pics of her soon!

Flower is starting to go a little bonkers being cooped up in the tiny bathroom. She hardly knows what to do with herself. She has one toy but I'm afraid to give her too much of an activity for fear of her damaging her stitches.

But it is an excellent sign that she's on her way to being healed. She still has litterbox issues, which I don't understand.

I let Flower peek out of the door at Carrie, who slowly approached non-aggressively. Flower hissed so I shut the door. But this time Carrie was fine.

We'll visit the vet again on Monday or Tuesday and maybe Flower will get her collar off, which she would like, no doubt! She doesn't seem to be dragging her foot around much, either, so hopefully she'll have full use of the foot and leg again when all of this is over.

Thanks for the well wishes!

Yay! Google came through and now we have free wireless in Mountain View, CA!

Flower's surgery went fine. She stayed at the vet's office 4 days afterwards and came home Saturday evening. She was alert when I picked her up and she purred when I talked to her, but once I set the carrier down in the car - she stared at me for a little while and then fell asleep. So asleep that I was able to stop by the pet store on the way home and when I came back to the car she was still 'resting'. Thank goodness!

I set her up in the bathroom, as it is the only room that I can shut the doors on and be able to keep her confined to a small area. Plus it is linoleum, which is a darn good thing because mere hours after setting her up with her new bed, blankets, scratching post, food dishes, and litterbox, she was sick and there was poo everywhere! Luckily everything washes fine and continues to wash and rewash fine!

I can tell that today she has more energy than even yesterday, so that's a great sign. Once she gets all of her energy back, though, it is going to be nearly impossible to keep her from climbing all over and gong nuts from confinement! She has stitches on her rump - from the surgery for the broken hip joint - and stitches on her belly from the spaying. I haven't been able to get pics of the belly yet, but here is how her rump looks. There has been no bleeding or puffiness, which is such a relief. She gets oral antibiotics which she loves...ha.


That's my hand! I have big mits for a gal, but still, check out how tiny she is! And such a tiny thing having two big surgeries together.


Poor, poor, pitiful Flower


"I hate this freakin collar!"

See how in the second photo her foot is curling under? This is the thing that concerns me the most - she has to drag that foot around (and the leg sometimes) as she walks, like the nerves are shot. I talked to her vet and he said that the nerves have a lot of inflamation around them and hopefully once that subsides she can use her foot better. We go back for a check-up in a week or so, he'll check this out then. Think good thoughts for flower!

: ) Flower thanks everyone (as I do!) for all your kind thoughts and well-wishes!

Meanwhile, Carrie is interested in what is going on, but isn't acting out or otherwise showing stress or upset. Whew. I'll worry about how to introduce them later. I just hope they like each other (okay, I hope Carrie likes Flower!) once they're familiar with each other.

Flower had surgery on her hip Tuesday. She is doing well, I hear, and will come home probably Friday or Saturday. I have no idea what she will need!

She's a tough cookie with surgery on her broken bone, getting spayed, the vaccinations, dewormed, tested for diseases, a flea bath, and a wound stitched all in 24 hrs! Especially considering she wouldn't let me near her 4 weeks ago and didn't let me hold her until Monday!

The racoon came back. He started doing his walnut thing so I went outside just now. We stared at each other. He scratched. I picked up ammo from the grass. He left by way of the back fence. VICTORY IS MINE! At least for this hour. It's only 11:45pm.

This morning Flower visited a vet. In the waiting room, she was so scared that she let me hold her - a first. She curled in as deep into my arms as she could get. She had a lot to deal with:
limping from a hip issue
wounds on inside leg
pregnant?
fleas
needed vaccines
tar on a foot
The doctor said her ears and mouth look good but shook his head at her other issues. 8 hrs later I go back in to look at the x-rays and she has a broken hip. The ball part of the leg bone broke off inside the joint and the leg bone was separated from the hip bones by a centimeter or so. I don't know how she was walking at all. So, I signed a bill for a total of $1300 for all the vaccines, surgery, anesthesia, flea bath, spaying, and sewing up her wound. She's having so much happen to her all at once, it's a good thing she's scrappy. She won't get surgery until Tuesday or Wednesday and won't come home until at least Friday. Poor little girl.

This morning, at 2:30am, I finally got out of bed after laying awake listening to someone(s) having a very loud party on my roof.

It was a constant whack! bam! bump bump rolllllll. Nothing even a deep sleeper like me could sleep through.

So I went outside, thinking it was the family of opposums that live under my house that were on the roof. I have had it with the opposums, they live under my bathtub and inside the house it sounds like they're rearranging furniture down there. I can live with that - but they breed fleas better than a lab could. Each time I take a shower there are tens of fleas in the tub. I have a spray to kill them that lasts a few weeks, and there is always a serious flea mortuary under the bathroom trash can. Unfortunately Carrie the Cat is highly allergic to their bites and she's driven insane by just the one bite that the fleas can get in before her Frontline flea killer kicks in. Carrie recently had a cortisone shot for the itching but it's already back again. So, the opposums must move on. (By the way - have you SEEN their feet? Sheesh. I don't mind the rat tails and I think their faces are cute, but their feet - eek!)

So outside, I can see that someone is in the walnut tree over the roof and shaking the heck out of it. Bam Bam! Walnuts fall and roll down the roof. Soon I realize that there are two gleaming eyes and the nose of a racoon staring down at me from the roof - the culprit!


Not my photo but that same innocent look!

I ask him what the heck he thinks he's doing but he just goes back up the roof and starts jumping at the tree again. I watched for a while. He would make the walnuts fall and when they rolled down the roof, he would go to the edge to look down to see where they went. Then back up for more. It was a game - knock them off, watch them roll. Imaginary raccoon giggle. So I threw walnuts at him. He came over to look at me again - 5 feet from my face - his little nose and eyes just looked at me. I told him that he was driving me crazy! He just went back for more walnuts. I threw more nuts. Eventually he "ran away" - if you can call it "running away." He jumped onto the fence and walked along the top of it straight toward me and on past... Sheesh. He has also been vandalizing my pond!