Kitty's Turn

Tuesday morning 7:00 am February 7th started out like most mornings these days. Wima, our 17½ year old kitty was sleeping between as usual –  between Frank and me, between his legs, between my legs, between our feet at the foot of the bed, between our pillows at the head of our bed. Wima gives an entirely different meaning to the term "sleeping around". She does not wake us by some intentional act of shaking or prodding. Ok, occasionally she dabs at Frank's hair-follicles-challenged spot on the top of his scalp with one gentle and prodding nail. Usually though, her mere pressing and warm presence gradually but imperceptibly give one or both of us a sense of having been cramped up or crowded during our sleep. We stretch and she moves - reluctantly - often jumping down from the bed with that soft plopping sound of hers. That first Tuesday morning in February was a different scenario, however.

Since his hip replacement in December, Frank's favorite side sleeping position is unavailable to him temporarily for a few months. Frank, half-awake, stretched out his cramped leg and we heard a loud THUD. I said to Frank, "That sure sounded different." I turned to look over the edge of my side of the bed and saw the hindquarters of Wima as she high-tailed it out of our bedroom - on three legs, holding her right rear leg out in an awkward position. She ran full tilt down our stairs and, rather than leaping from a few feet away, she use brute force to claw her way up onto her favorite chair with three paws' worth of nails.

We do not know if she had gotten tangled up in the bedclothes and fell awkwardly, if she was sound asleep and could not react as she usually does, or if her bones had become brittle with old age, but we knew something was amiss and suspected a break or severe muscular twist of some sort. I called the vet and left a message and then, not waiting for a call back or appointment time, Frank and I and a stressed kitty were waiting outside the vet's door –  in the pouring rain – when they opened at 8:00am. An X-ray at 8:15am confirmed that Wima had broken her leg, both bones in the region between what would be the knee and ankle on a human.

The vet immobilized the break area with a bandaged wrap and told us that cat bones heal quickly - if the bones can be kept in a stationary position while mending. Because both the "knee" and the "ankle" had to be held in position the "cast" ran all the way up to her hip and out past her toes. Poor kitty. It was very hard dragging that "club" around with her everywhere. So she just hid under the bed all the time. I lured her out to eat and for "as needed" pain meds with cans of tuna and cat Greenies. Dragging her out from beneath the bed I believe offset any benefit from the pain meds, which Frank and I had no way of knowing if she did indeed need anyway. It is the same dilemma as when you have a sick child. Do you let them sleep or wake them to give them their medication?

After three days we gave up on the pain meds since we saw no difference in her demeanor with or without. One week later, on Valentine's Day, we took her back to the vet for a cast check. She had kept it quite clean. Wima thankfully continued to be fastidious about coming out to use her litter box. We learned that the bandaging had slipped down her leg about ½" since the leg is tapered. As she dragged that bulky wad behind her, it continued to work its way down toward her toes, failing in its purpose of immobilization. The vet rewrapped the leg and we were please to see Wima at one point had emerged from beneath the bed to bask in a sliver of sunshine.

But the vet did recommend a surgeon and installing a plate and screws. This option would immobilize the region better and perhaps the external bandaging could be eliminated. It looked like surgery with a plate and screws was the next option. Frank and I wanted to find the least traumatic option for Wima with the best conditions for healing. We could not bear the thought of euthanization or amputation so we opted for the surgery with its high price tag. She does not act like an old cat even though 17½ is the equivalent of 84 in human years. We took her to a veterinary surgeon in Stockton, a forty minute drive away, on Thursday Feb 16th and he did the surgery that afternoon. The hospital kept her overnight with an IV and nursing care and we picked her up Friday late morning. She was sporting a sparkly pink splint and sparkly purple bandage where the IV had been. She seemed to be prowling around the surgeon's office a fair amount, expressing no fear and no desire to hide back in her carrier, even climbing into my lap when I sat on the floor.

The specialty and experience of the surgeon was fortunate. Our local vet's advice about how quickly cats heal is not quite as accurate with geriatric felines. The surgeon showed us X-rays from his other geriatric cat patients equivalent in age to Wima, that had broken their legs. Via their X-rays the surgeon educated us on the expected rate of healing with different methods of treatment - external cast only, cast with plate and screws, cast with plate and screws plus added healing medium. A mixture of bone meal and nutrients speeds bone growth in the injured area. He packed the area around Wima's break with this revolutionary new bone compound that he'd had good experience with. We were a bit disappointed that the plate and screws would not be sufficient. But the surgeon said that tiny animals (Wima is only about 7 lbs) require tiny plates and thin plates can bend. Also her bone had split sufficiently high up that the surgeon could not put in as many screws as he would have preferred, hence the splint for external support. He intentionally limited his effort to align the bones precisely, telling us that in doing so he would need to separate the muscle from the bone during his explorations. This robs the bone of its blood supply to heal; so it is better to aim for a slightly misaligned heal that is faster. We liked the surgeon. He has had 43 years of experience yet he still apparently keeps up on new techniques that are best for his animal patients.

So we brought Wima home armed with an antibiotic (twice a day) and pain med (three times a day, as needed), both in liquid form administered orally with a syringe. The drag from beneath the bed ritual continues but we have made simplifying modifications. We do both meds only twice a day. I have filled the area beneath the bed with plastic bins so Wima's ability to find the dead center, least accessible, position under the bed has been limited. Wima has learned that I am more stubborn than she is and coming to me after I coax her with Greenies is preferrable to being nudged out (albeit very gently) by being dragged by her tail and remaining good rear leg. Frank and I have learned how to position her head so the meds do not just leak out the opposite side of her mouth as I depress the plunger and also so we do not strangle her as they go in. Wima has learned to swallow and I have learned the correct speed so she can keep up. Wima has been very good throughout all this and, despite the indignities, she has not bitten or scratched me in defense. She has lived up to her name, an acronym for Woe Is Me, A**hole. For those of you uninitiated, here is how WIMA got her name.

Long story on how Wima got her name:
Dan brought her home from the pool where he lifeguarded in the summer of 2000 – for one night only Frank and I were assured – until the owner returned. I will leave the resolution of that scenario to the reader's imagination. He had named her Magellan because the white markings on her belly looked like the Straight of Magellan. Dan was going on a high school trip abroad to France and wanted the kitty to bond to him, be his cat and not the family cat, so we were supposed to keep her in his room to absorb his scents or some other such scientific theory of imprinting. She was miserable at being left alone and would howl pitifully. "Woe is me... Woe is me...". When she got no response she would angrily add a punctuated screech at the end that we interpreted as "A**hole!" Hence the acronym WIMA became her nickname and Magellan sort of fell by the wayside.

Short story on how Wima got her name. Neat but not true:

We took Wima to the vet and the vet commented on how sweet a name she had and asked if it was from the chorus of the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight. We said "yes" so as not to launch into a long explanation, but not really. Wima is not short for Wimoweh. But since it is a fun song anyway and about a lion sleeping, here is a You Tube link, published on Oct 29, 2013 so you can hear what it sounds like. Music video by The Tokens performing The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh). (C) Originally Recorded 1961. All rights reserved by Sony Music Entertainment.

Frank just texted me the previous photo as I complete this blog post. He is sitting in his office and Wima came out from hiding and made herself comfortable not far from where he sat at his computer. Slowly she is adapting and we sure hope she recovers well. Her sutures will come out Friday, March 3rd.

As I was about to click the publish button for this post, Wima just surprised us by appearing downstairs in the family room. She has learned to negotiate the stairs! Perhaps she has run out of her tuna treat and has come in search of it. This is great news! She is observing us from her safe vantage point under the blue leather ottoman.