Scratchy's diary: A snapped tendon, a broken leg and short rations for breakfast
April 9th 2010 07:40
We have had better days. It started poorly when the Big Boss woke with a headache and a dry mouth. He drank too much red wine last night while entertaining vegetarian visitors. He doesn't mind cooking vegetarian, and last night's roast pumpkin and feta quiche won rave reviews, but the following morning he always feels meat deprived.
I don't know if it was the hangover, the dry mouth or the flesh famine which caused him to spread less than the usual amount of margarine on my regular morning slice of toast, but I wish he wouldn't take things out on me.
The Big Boss then took his foggy head to work, and Little Boss took us to the park. That's when things took a turn for the worse. Literally.
We had done the sniff (five cats had visited the park overnight and two dogs and been there shortly before us this morning) and it was time to run. Short Black took off and I turned to sprint after her. Bad move. Something went snap.
The only thing to do in a situation like that is scream, and I did so with with every fibre and unsnapped tendon available to me. It scared the daylights out of Short Black, who tried, in a display of deep caring and concern, to attack me. Little Boss quickly stopped that.
The pain, I worked out, came from trying to put my right rear leg on the ground. So, thinking my way through the problem, I fell over. Immediately, I felt much more comfortable.
Little Boss wasn't feeling comfortable, however. "I need help," she muttered, and I could sympathise. I am, I admit, no longer at my racing weight. Big Boss has picked me up once or twice when I've been reluctant to get in the car, but his eyes bulge dangerously and he goes a bright shade of puce when he does it. It's worth refusing to get in the car occasionally just to see it. But Little Boss wasn't about to try lifting me. Even if we had the car.
Which we didn't. And we were more than a kilometre from home.
Little Boss needed help, and looking around, she spotted a guy sitting on the balcony of his second-floor flat overlooking the park. Watching us. Little Boss looked at him. He looked back. Nup. Not the helpful type, that one.
So I stood up. It was brave, I know, but what else could I do? I didn't know, at that stage, what was wrong, but I knew very well that I couldn't put any weight on my back right leg. So I set off for home doing a three-legged shuffle. Slowly. Very slowly. Very, very slowly.
At this rate, although dinner was more than 10 hours away, we weren't going to make it home in time.
Two women came to the rescue, one passing by and one in her front yard. They both looked concerned and started talking with Little Boss about the problem. It was suggested that I wait in the front yard while Little Boss went to get the car. Good idea, I thought, and happily fell down again.
Back home, Little Boss parked the car and, without getting herself or me out of it, used the Little Phone to ring the vet. She described everything that had happened in detail and then went quiet for a while listening to what was being said on the other end. Then she rang the Big Boss at his work and told him everything. That's when I learned that the vet suspected I had ruptured a tendon.
Little Boss — and she has asked me to insert at this point that she was under the weather too, having such a sore throat and rasping cough that she had seen a Hooman Vet the day before — started the car and drove off.
They made a fuss at the vet, and it was not all due to my good looks. Then they stuck a needle in me and the lights went out. I heard later that they had to anaesthetise me so they could get my hurt leg into the right position to take X-rays. They needed X-rays to confirm the tendon rupture, and give some guidance for the surgery which would be required to repair it. They also wanted to make sure I hadn't done any further damage, like breaking my leg.
The X-ray confirmed the tendon rupture. And a broken leg. "Quite nasty" is how the vet described the break.
Now it's late afternoon and I'm home and I can tell you that I'm busting. They have put what the call a soft cast on me, and I can say with confidence that it's primary purpose is make it impossible to get into a position to pee. Or poop.
I was standing, pondering the solution to this problem, when I fell into the garden and couldn't get out. It's just one humiliation after another. And it's still more than an hour to dinner time.
We have had better days.
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