The cats, three surgeries and an accident
Fortunately it all sounds a bit worse than it really is… let’s start with the three surgeries. These surgeries (for the cats, of course, took place last week and are basically nothing more than neutering the cats. Since some of them walk outside from now and then, it is needed to have that done since, before I moved here, one cat already had two nests and that is enough if you ask me.
I don’t have much to tell about the surgeries, we left the cats and we could pick them up a day later again, it wasn’t much special (for us). The only thing we really noticed is that the bellies of the cats were shaved. We took some pictures of them of course:
From left to right you can see the mother cat Stain and then her two daughters Flamey and Neko. We think the cats have not much experienced from the surgeries, it doesn’t really look that they are different in behavior than before (which can happen sometimes when an animal gets fixed). So everything is ok with them…
Except for one of them…
The mother cat, Stain, is apparently hit by a car last wednesday.. It was already weird that Stain let her caught so easily last wednesday when she was outside but upstairs.. normally she is really hard to get, she want to get in but at the same time she doesn’t haha. But yah, this time it was really easy, we didn’t really know why, especially since she didn’t cry or anything but was just as quiet as normal. We didn’t think much of it and since we had to go out ourselves that day we put her inside and did our things as usual.
Later, around dinnertime, I thought that Stain was a bit quiet, she didn’t move much and when the food for the cats came out, something they all wake up for, she still remained in her own spot, half sleeping. I thought she might have been tired and left her alone, we still didn’t notice anything.
Michelle picked her up at around nine in the evening, to cuddle a bit with her, something she does more often and Stain usually don’t mind, but now Stain was growling a bit and really wanted to get back on the floor, as soon as Michelle put her down, we noticed that she was walking limp so we took a closer look and found a small wound on her hip.
We called the emergency hospital for animals (I didn’t even know this existed but yah, it seems it is) and asked what we should do and if we could drop by. They told us we could come by but this would cost 105 dollar while if we made an appointment, we only had to pay 39 dollars. Quite some difference if you ask me but since we didn’t know what was wrong, we decided to go directly anyways.
Once we arrived there, we had to fill in a form and they looked at her, we heard that it was the best if they also took an X-Ray, we asked what would be the cost of that: including the 105 dollar that had to be paid for the consult, it would be around the 300 dollar.. nice, and then they didn’t do anything to the animal itself. Right, we agreed, paid up front and they went to see if they could see what was wrong with her hip (they already saw some wounds and stuff and these already showed that it wasn’t a fight but most likely a car that hit her).
After the pictures were made we heard (and saw through the photo’s) that the hip was dislocated. They told us that there were two main solutions, one was to put the hip back to his original position, this would be the cheapest option but brings a lot of risk with it, like a 50% chance that the hip would get dislocated again and that there might even be some more damaged, and the other option would be a surgery, this would be the best and safest option and works really well but it is also more expensive.
To pop the hip back in its location, it would cost about 300 dollar at one doctor and about 600 dollar at the one we went to for the research (we called around a bit for different prices) and for the surgery we would have to pay between 1500 and 2000 dollar (even more at others). What to do next.. the 300 or 600 option isn’t so much of a problem but the 1500 to 2000 dollar is quite some money, especially since there are some other things also that have to be paid soon.
We didn’t know that night what we had to do, we received some medication (with a value of 80 dollar, and it is not exactly much if you ask me) and called around yesterday and went to several doctors with her file that we received (for which we also had to pay).
Right, so now it is Saturday evening (and I just at a ‘bitterbal’.. but more about that later) and we still don’t know exactly what we should do. The operation is just too expensive right now, we want to but we don’t want to create problems for ourselves, like said, we have some expensive things coming up soon (like, for example, my adjustment of status (because of the immigration) which can be taken out of our account any time now, which is another 1000 dollars) and, well, popping it back in only brings a lot of risk.. the doctors that we called (everyone we spoke to, even the ones who couldn’t do it themselves) were telling us that it might give troubles later and they all said it would be better to do a surgery.
We also asked a few doctors how the pain is for her and, apparently, it isn’t all that bad.. Some even said that if we don’t do much about it, that she would still be able to walk around everywhere after a couple of weeks, she would limp but other than that there wouldn’t be too much problems. Cats are amazing with these things according to them. Good, that gives us some breathing space to see what we want and/or can do, to just put her to sleep because of a dislocated hip just sounds ridiculous if you ask me. It seems like it is indeed not that bad at the moment, she moves frequently to get some food, drink, to put herself on a different spot and we even found her on a 3 feet high closet..
We will see what we have, want and can do.
Tags: Cats
