It has been a while since I mentioned our long suffering cat, Mucha. I wrote a lengthy post, (click here) when I thought she simply wouldn’t make it. It has been many months since then and I think we are in the clear. She went in for her 3rd major surgery after a biopsy that showed the tumor was benign (not related to the earlier sarcoma) but fast growing. After the surgery the vet called us, almost giddy that she had a rare tumor that was related to foreign bodies. This foreign body in particular was a metal pin that was holding together her shoulder after she got shot by a be-be gun. During surgery the vet had decided that the tumor was so involved with the metal pin it was just better to take the pin out, so in theory (fingers crossed) it shouldn’t return.
Don’t look too close, lots of gory stitches. But, again she was a trooper. Defying our barricades to stay in the kitchen and enough healing in a week to the point where we thought it was safe to take her to Maine with us on vacation. I didn’t keep her in the cone more than the first day, she couldn’t reach most of the stitches with her tongue anyway, so I made her a tee- shirt.
She liked it better than the cone, but not much. She went though 3 of these tee shirts, she kept managing to stick her good front leg through the neck hole and stretching it out to the point where it would creep down her body and chaff against the stitches. I preferred the cotton chaffing to the hard plastic collar. In Maine she killed a mouse, which thrilled my dad greatly, and showed every sign of returning to normality. There was a moment where Paul and I removed her stitches on the appointed day on the picnic table and swabbed her down with iodine, but she was otherwise very happy.
These days all her fur has grown back and she looks very healthy. I hesitated on writing this post for a long time because I was hopeful that she would make a full recovery, but it seems that pin in her shoulder had been doing quite a lot for her. She walks with a very pronounced limp these days, when you feel her shoulder it feels like there are all kinds of extra pieces moving that shouldn’t be. But I don’t know that there is a way to fix it. She has had 3 major surgeries after all, it isn’t much of a surprise that there are some after effects. So we give her a little extra love and hope that the 3rd time is the charm…
