Thursday 18 December 2008

It's Hip to be a Cat

Ouch, bad pun in my title (you'll see), but not as ouch as Lusya, Tanya's kitten (cat?) who followed some meat out of a window which happened to be on the 5th floor of a building and ended up on the pavement below. Two trips to vets later and Lusya's been X-rayed a number of times (the first lot done by incompetents who didnt see any break, and the second by an apparently much better vet who managed to show a distinct fracture), and had her hip put back together with metal plates, yay for surgery! She's doing okay now, despite some interesting wound management (they didn't fully close up, instead she's had a swab sewn in - what? I thought that just HELPED infection? it has something to do with fluid buildup I'm not sure - and Marta's been giving her injections three times a day, until last night, because today she goes back to the vet and they'll examine her / hopefully close her up properly for a few months until they need to remove the metalwork) - but she's chirpy enough and doesnt seem at all bothered by the whole healing process, apparently feeling no pain in the op site, but with no apparent nerve damage either (she can definitely feel tweezers pulling at the fur around her foot!) - kittens' pain self-management must be awesome.

There is one funny side of this - she sometimes has to wear a protective collar to stop her licking at her wound, and the Chinese for this collar is an "Elizabeth", a direct reference to the ruffs worn in "olde England", which we all thought was really quite amusing.

Oh wait, not as amusing as this (not cat related, and I got her permission before posting) - Marta lost her phone. Hmm, that doesnt surprise me anymore, but HOW did she lose it? "In the toilet at the uni". I could see where this was going before she even finished the story. See, they don't do seated things here, they have squatters. And poor Marta left her phone in the back pocket of her jeans (big mistake anyway, thieves love that), so while she was taking her trousers off, the phone slipped out and fell into the ceramic basin, slid down it and plooooop! Right into the vertical hole, where everything else goes. Nice one, Marta!

No way to get it back (and would you want to, even if you COULD?), but at least is gives a classic Tale of Urumqi for my blog :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

incompetent doctors who can't read x-rays? i believe we have them here in england too, more specifically at durham uni hospital >.<

Harry said...

ah yes that debacle. i seem to recall we solved that with a trip to the RVI :) yay for newcastle having proper procedures like getting a consultant to review every slide just in case.