My name is George, and I need your help! They’ve got me imprisoned in a wire cage and I need to find out how to escape. Yes, I’m George, although I’m a girl (that’s another story involving my brain-addled family). One old lady said I was “a common housecat”, can you imagine? Leaving aside the insult and the degradation, I am anything but “common”.
My troubles began when I was making my usual quick dash across Country Club Boulevard behind my house. Some idjit came speeding around the corner and smacked me in the right rear. When I tried to pick myself up, I couldn’t use that back leg at all. And my whole back end hurt like crazy. The only way I could move was to use my front paws to drag the back end along, on its side – and I still had to cross back over the road. Of course the idjit never stopped to see who he had hit; after all, I’m wearing my phone number and my folks could have come and gotten me.
It took me 30 hours, but I dragged myself back across that road and all the way through that big empty field behind my house (Hah! Empty – except I managed to soak up a lot of burrs and stuff!). I confess, I had to stop and regroup. Then down the whole length of the house, around to the garage, through the cat door which opens on my magnetic key – and wow, that cat door was hard to do without standing up, and the edges scraped against my painful hip. Then I dragged the whole length of the garage, under the car, and through the next cat door into the house, with the same difficulty getting through. It was at that point that I collapsed.
It was a little after 11 o’clock at night and the Senior Citizens I live with had gone to bed at 9, but they heard the cat door and came out into the hall. “Where have you BEEN, young lady?”, said Larry. When he touched my back leg, I growled at him. I’m glad they finally noticed that my front end was upright and the back half was on its side. They went and got my small rug and dragged me onto it (I gave them some more growls to tell them to be more careful).
They picked up both ends of the rug and carried me into the Master Bedroom and put me on the foot of the bed to await the morning (there’s an emergency vet clinic open all night and just up the road, but as I said, they are Seniors and have lost a lot of brain cells). By morning I had slid off the bed and they had to drag me onto the rug again. Then they put me on the back seat of the car and took me to the animal hospital. Here they weighed me (would it be immodest of me to admit to a nice slim 8 pounds?), prodded me (growl some more), then propped me up and took a series of X-Rays. Then, finally, I got a pain shot.
Dr. Smith said my hip bone was completely separated from my pelvis, and it looked like it was at least an inch higher, off by itself. But my back end organs all looked OK –– apparently a broken spleen is common. She said there were two choices – I could be sent out for orthopedic surgery to re-attach hip to pelvis, at a cost of around $3000 (ya gotta be kidding, my folks are mostly living on Social Security, so that’s not gonna happen) – or I could be confined to a dog crate (imagine, a DOG crate!) for a month or more. She gave me a “better than 50-50 chance” because “cats do very well in knitting bones if they are confined so they can’t move around much”.
So we came home, by coincidence just when the proof copy of the print edition of Larry’s book, “The Cat Connection”, arrived. I say coincidence because this memoir covers a lifetime of cats and ends with me as the current “star”. He’s been posting updates about me, and my pics, on the book’s page at www.catconnection.info.
So that’s how I got here. Next morning after the vet, here I am in this cage with a week’s worth of pain pills, and then some herbal capsules I have to take every day, to say nothing of the Metamucil (and nothing is exactly what should be said about it). They’ve tried to give me some basics, and I can see out the window, and pretty decent food, for a jail. But it’s been WEEKS now, and I need to find a way out!
I almost made it one time, when Mom left the door unlocked and went into the kitchen for something. I made it out onto the cedar chest and all the way to the floor before she got back. And I was NOT happy to be re-incarcerated! I’ve watched for another chance, but now they always lock the door.
I’ve prevailed on one of the house slaves to help me post this blog, and I asked for my picture to be included. I’ve also insisted on having my own email – george@catconnection.info – so please, PLEASE, let me have your thoughts on how I can escape! I’m going stir crazy in here. Thanks.
I'm out! I'm OUT!
Can't jump, hurts to walk, not allowed outdoors, but
I"m OUT!
