How much can life throw at one little kitty?

There just been so much going on that I’m going to pass over to mummy this week, if it was up to me I’d just tell you about the amazing walkies I had with mummy in the wood where I found a little tiny mousie to play with. Mummy was amazed at how I heard it as the wind was blowing really strong and the trees and their leave were making lots of noise and swishing backwards and forwards and yet my super blindie senses heard a little mouse climbing a blade of grass, I guess it was having its walkies at the same time as us. It was an extra good walkies with tree climbing and all sorts but mummy says that yet again we need to let you all know what’s going on with Precious, I thought this was my blog but seems Precious is getting all the attention at the moment. For those of you that follow my Facebook and Instagram you may already know the story of what’s been going on but I’ll hand over to mummy to fill in all the details.

Hi Everybody, Jenny’s mummy here.

Poor little Precious has really been through it in the past couple of weeks but when she arrived we’d noticed that her ear seems to be really big, bigger than we had expected, and slightly squishy, almost like there was some fluid in there, rather than just scar tissue, a trip to the vet and they cofirmed that there was fluid there so started Little P on a course of anti inflammatory. This didn’t seem to make much difference but the meowing and yeowling took over and it was upsetting the girls so much that we booked Precious in for her lady operation. Whilst she was having that done the vet again looked at her ear. The lady op went well and put little P in her ever so cute onesie, we had a couple at home from when Angelin and Peppar had to use them so we tried those, the first one was too small and Precious managed to get her paws out if it, Peppars one was a bit too big but with a bit of modification and a cute little top knot to take up some extra material it would make do until we ordered the right size for her. She really does make a cute Christmas elf.

Anyway the vet again confirmed that there was still fluid in Precious ear but also something hard there, could be the scar tissue or something else, as she had just had her lady op and still hadn’t settled into our family, the vet agreed that the best thing to do was to keep an eye on it, let her recover from her op and settle in and then go from there, keeping an eye on it to make sure it wasn’t causing Precious any further discomfort. The last thing we wanted to do was to put Precious through more surgery, she’s been through so much in her short little life that we wanted her to feel loved, part of the family and enjoy being in a safe, secure home and part of the perfectly imperfect crew.

A few days later though I got a phone call whilst I was at work, saying can you get home, Precious has burst her ear. I headed home and in the meantime my husband had spoken to the vets and booked an appointment Precious was bundled up, yet again, and off the the vet. Kind of luckily, she had burst it at the bottom and so this made it a bit easier for the vet to drain off what fluid he could. The advice was that we should keep the small hole open, bathe her ear and allow the fluid to drain, he said there was infection in there but with the antibiotics and anti inflammatories we already had his should help clear anything up. We did however book a further appointment with the vet who did Precious spay and had said she could do something further with her ear if we needed to. We, we’re hopeful that with draining the ear over the weekend this would allow her ear to then heal properly without the need for further surgery. Over the weekend we drained her ear, cleaned and bathed it and were continually amazed at how patient she was with it all and how good she was letting us do what was obviously uncomfortable for her. Despite our best efforts and draining the fluid, her ear continued to swell and the vet visit on Monday was really just confirmation of what we really didn’t want to do, book her in for another operation. But, Precious is family and we promised her, like we have all of the other girls that we would do whatever we can, whatever it takes to make sure they are happy and healthy and give them the best life possible. Whilst we thought there might be expenses with Precious and any potential treatment we really didn’t expect them to be quite this soon, before we’ve even had her 4 weeks, this little teeny, tiny cat was now going to have vet visit number 8 to have yet more surgery.

The vets acted really quickly and booked her in for the following day for the operation, the cost was unknown as they couldn’t know what they might find until they actually did the surgery but we just wanted to get Precious better. I wondered about how unfair life can be sometimes, how much can one little cat take? She was changed from the loud mouthed ‘Shouty McShout Face’ that we had got to know and was now as quiet as a mouse, hardly talking, no purring and just sleeping all day and all night, not even moving for food which we had to take to her and give her whilst she was snuggled up in her favourite blankie. Our hearts were breaking for her, she’s only 2, she’s in a strange place, with strange cats that get confused by her coming and going, she’s in heat and then not and hasn’t even had time to get to know us properly so can’t really take comfort from our touch or voice as the other girls would. Every time I picked her up she would shake with fear as she thought I was going to put her back in her carrier for another vet visit. When I went near to her she ran away and hid, it just broke our hearts. We knew we were doing the right thing and making the right decisions but it’s tough to see her like that and emotionally it’s just draining.

But as I said we’re in this for the long haul and with a little patience, we can build that trust and confidence with her. The day of the operation she still had her onesie on as I dropped her off in the morning and went onto work, the day seemed to last forever but eventually we got the call to say she was in recovery, doing well and the op went as well as could be expected. They removed a tissue mass from her ear which we can send off for analysis but at that moment in time we just wanted her home. I picked her up in the evening and she was modelling a new cone as part of her Christmas elf outfit. She was petrified, when I let her out of her Carrie she bolted, she flew round the house, eventually coming to rest under our bed, we gave her a finger tip stroke, moved all the food, water and litter tray in there and closed the door, giving her time to decompress and relax a bit. I went back to check on her and just sat with her, lying on my tummy next to the bed, just gently stroking her, she was shivering so I put daddy’s t shirt over her which seemed to comfort her a bit and then bit by bit tried to persuade her out. Eventually she ventured out and I scooped her up and put her on my lap for a cuddle, still bundled in daddy’s t shirt. We stayed there for over an hour, nothing else mattered other than making this little one feel loved and safe.

Each day she’s got better, although she’s still sleeping a lot she is starting to move round a bit and we’ve cleaned around her wound and washed her face which helped. We’ve also now been able to remove her onesie which we had to cut off as the only way for it to go on and off is over her head and there was no way we were going to risk hurting her ear. Her ear seems to be healing well and the cone doesn’t seem to bother her that much anymore, now she’s learnt how to eat with it on. We keep having to clean the cone though as she’s such a messy eater and the food goes everywhere inside the cone as she shakes her head after eating. Of course she can’t wash her face as she would normally and without her top lip she’s messy even at the best of times.

We really hope that this is the last of things for a while, that Precious can now concentrate on getting better, getting to know us and the girls and settling into our family. There’s still a lot of hissing and growling going on (mostly Jenny and Angelin) although we have had a couple of glimmers of light as Millie and Jenny have each got up on our laps at the same time as Precious so we know they can do it when they want to and that’s something that we can build on.

So, we’ve got everything crossed that the next couple of vet visits for her to have a post op check and to get the stitches out are the last for a while. We’ve all got our fingers and paws crossed for our little sweet P.