High as a kite

...the cat, not me.

I'm beginning to notice a trend. Every time I take vacation, the cat winds up at the vet. Yesterday afternoon, I was watching TV in the living room, and she came downstairs to get a drink of water. I noticed as she was going back up the stairs that she was only using three feet.

Uh-oh.

I chased after her, retrieved her from under the bed (another uh-oh. Why is she hiding?) and made her walk for me. She wouldn't let the back foot even touch the floor.

And so, it looked like we were off to the vet's. I called and managed to get the very last time slot available on a Friday afternoon. It wasn't the vet we usually see, but I didn't really care. This woman felt all over both Lolly's back feet, massaging and stretching and probing with her fingers to see if there was one particular spot that hurt worse than the rest. Lolly didn't cry out or flinch or anything, just showed a general desire to get away. Then the vet checked her back. Nothing wrong there either. There was a little bit of swelling with the boo-boo back foot, but that seems consistent with her diagnosis: she thinks the cat has sprained the flexor muscles in her right back foot. She thinks Lolly probably jumped off of something and landed wrong.

The vet gave me some pain killers to give the cat, (in liquid form. Hurray, now there are two syringes to keep track of!), and if things don't improve I'm to bring her back for an x-ray on Monday.

Things are improving. She's putting some weight on it now, though she's still limping. When she walks at all. This stuff works like morphine, the vet said. The cat spends a lot of time either asleep or looking stoned. Seriously. She sat here on the sofa for the better part of the evening with pupils as big as saucers, limp as Frieda's cat (from Peanuts). That was just after I gave her the meds. She's more alert and active right now. She just walked past me as I typed this, and the limping is much less pronounced than it was earlier in the evening. Partly pain meds, partly healing, I hope.

Silver lining, though -- my usual vet had said something about trying to make the cat gain some weight. It's hard to do. She'll only eat as much as she wants and then leave the rest. We're making some progress, though. She was 7.5 lbs last visit. Yesterday she was 8.3. Huzzah!