Author: Emily

I realised how long it’s been since I checked in on here.  I just had a catch up on some of the trikitty blogs I used to follow.  I was sad to hear that Jill crossed the rainbow bridge, but comforted that her brother will be there waiting for her.  As always, I teared up at Smore’s blog.  That kitty is so much like my Leila in how she chose her one human!

Leila and Milo are both doing well.  As always, I feel a bit of a fraud being here as Leila’s leg was saved and she is currently not a tripawd.  I was looking at my photos in my last post and I remembered how she used to hold up her injured leg when she sat, and how she had a very obvious limp.  I can’t remember exactly when that stopped but you barely notice a limp anymore.  She has a good – though not full – range of movement in her leg and is very happy.  She is currently sitting on my lap as I write this!

When my Canadian work permit finally came through, I worked for a while in a friend’s pet foods store.  I learned so much about cat and dog nutrition and care.  Leila was taking some joint support supplements for a while which made a huge difference to her recovery.  I even caught her on top of the fridge-freezer a few times before she realised I didn’t like her going up there.  At the beginning of her recovery she wouldn’t jump onto high places because she knew it would hurt her leg to jump down.  A least that what I assume.  A couple of times at the very beginning, she did, then mewed for me to lift her down again.  Feeling her leg now feels much smoother.  Although the bone isn’t perfectly straight, it seems to have healed even more and I can feel muscle around it where I couldn’t for a while after her pins were removed.

Although she is still very much my cat – my shadow to day in fact, she is opening up to other people much more.  She will sit with Craig and when we went away, she even sat with our two housemates (we rent our downstairs bedroom out to help out a couple of friends).  When we moved into our own house last March, she quickly found her ‘spot’ inside a closet.  Her leg is slightly twisted (Craig sometimes calls her Captain Hook) so she has found that she can use it to open closet doors.  I put a cat bed on the lowest shelf in the closet.  I figured she is going to sleep there anyway so better a cat bed than my clean towels!

 

 

Leila can’t tuck her injured leg all the way in, but she still makes herself comfortable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I bet you can’t guess which cupboard the cat treats are kept in!

Look how straight her injured leg is! More than I ever dared hope for!

 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and you and your tripawds have a great 2017!

We are settled into our new home and both cats are very happy.  We are medication free and cage free!  I thought I’d share some photos of them over the last couple of weeks…

 

 

I hope everyone else is doing well so far this winter.

Leila, Emily and Milo

So We left Alberta a week and a half ago.  No major hitches for us humans, but the day before, Leila had a run in with our old landlord’s dog.  Luckily a screen door separated them because the dog really went for her.  I have to say I was a little proud that Leila attacked back.  She is terrified of their big Labrador-mix dog who is really soft and completely disinterested in the cats, but this was the little dog.  I think a shiatsu, but still maybe double the size of my tiny cat.  Anyway, as I ran to the door, Leila leaped up the screen, over my shoulder and landed on the floor.  Poor girl was so scared!  The landing must have hurt her elbow joint, which upsets me a lot.  I have been really trying to minimize the amount she jumps down from high places specifically because I know this joint has a limited life-span before we join the true tripawds.  It was almost a good thing that she had to spend 10 hours of the next day in her travel box so that she could rest it.  Of course, she didn’t see it that way, but mewed less than when we did this journey the opposite way, almost 6 months ago.

We spent just over a week living with my in-laws.  They were lovely for putting us up until we found our own place, but they are in that blissful stage of life where their house is child-free, pet-free and grandchild-free (although my sister-in-law and her husband will be changing that for them in March).  They have an immaculate house with an expensive leather sofa so the cats were relegated to the basement, along with all of our furniture.  They could come upstairs with supervision but it’s quite hard to supervise two cats at once in a big, open-plan house.  Leila loves to eat flowers and plants, and has been missing her cat-grass.  Unfortunately, the recent loss of Craig’s grandmother meant that there were a lot of flowers in the house and a few got nibbled or pulled apart when I wasn’t looking.  Milo just seems to look for trouble!  Typical boy!  Last time the cats stayed there, when Craig and I were finishing our honeymoon in England, Leila was still pinned together and probably in pain, so she was much more docile and would sit for cuddles with my mother-in-law.  This time she was back to her usual standoffish, cat-like self where she mostly only likes me.  It was useful for supervision that she would follow me everywhere, but I think my mother-in-law was a little upset at the lack of cuddles.

Anyway, we found a basement suite to rent for 6 months until (hopefully) we buy our own place.  We’re in and mostly unpacked.  Both cats are coping so well with all of these changes.  I think it helps that we have our own furniture so it’s familiar to them.

 

Leila has been getting comfortable in a few favourite places.  I’m trying to avoid letting them sleep in the bed all day (yes, under the covers), I feel bad because it is cold here for them, but I think they will get used to it better if they’re not always super warm.

Now we have a bedroom door again, we’re trialing cat-free sleeping.  I definitely sleep better, but I do miss my Milo hot water bottle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Milo was helping us unpack.  He likes to be where all the action is happening.  Often directly under our feet!

That’s it for now.  We’re very happy to be in our own place and to have our furry companions back with us.  I missed them when they were in the basement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been a while since I posted.  Mainly because there hasn’t really been anything to post.

Leila is doing well.  We are weaning her off the steroids, which is great because I was struggling to deal with the hunger that the steroids was causing.  The poor girl was starving the whole time and really upset about it.  She now has a little bit of a belly, which is odd because she has always been naturally skinny.  I am trying not to over-feed her but it was so hard to watch my baby suffering when I knew how to stop it.  Anyway, that has improved a lot, but she is definitely cross with me for not giving her extra food.

In other news, and probably evident in the title of this post, we are moving again.  Back to British Columbia.  Craig has a new job starting next Monday.  We only had just over 2 weeks notice for this move so packing is happening.  Milo and Leila are enjoying all of the new toys (moving boxes) that they have to play with, and so far don’t seem too upset by the disorder of the house.  We will be staying with Craig’s parents initially, which always makes me worry in case the cats (mostly Milo) scratch or chew on anything.  Hopefully we can find our own place fairly quickly.

That’s Leila’s bad leg!  Look how well she can bend it now!

I am a bit concerned that Leila is not getting on with Milo as well as before.  I have mentioned in earlier posts that he can be a bit intense, he still likes to play like a kitten, and Leila has always gotten fed up with him.  I think she has lost her confidence since her accident because she knows she is not as strong as before.  Quite often pre-accident, when Milo was playing with a toy, Leila would jump in and take it away – just because she could.  She would get bored and leave it for him pretty quickly and it was always quite funny because he was much slower.  Recently she has backed off when Milo comes to play, even if she was there first, even when I try to include her.  Also, and more worryingly, he seems to be playing with her more roughly.  Maybe he isn’t, maybe its just because she is not as strong as before, but she often ends up hissing at him and I have heard some very angry growls from her.  It does not make him back off.  When she gets really upset I usually move Milo away myself, but I would prefer it if they could sort things out between them.  I am trying a few things to help them.  Firstly I have started feeding them together again.  As Leila was on the medication, I was feeding her in her cage so that Milo couldn’t get into the steroids (which I mixed with a bit of tuna and she ate not problems).  They have always had a double bowl before so now that Leila is only having 2ml of steroids once a day, I have started giving her that about 5 minutes early then feeding them their usual breakfast together.  I started this today so I will see how it goes.  I did read that it was less stressful for cats to be fed separately, but thinking back to what my vet-friend said about them being one cat not two, I think this may be better for them.  I am also going to make some time with just Leila to play.  This means poor Milo will have to be shut in the bathroom/laundry room for a little while, which he does not like, but I’m sure he can manage for 10 minutes at a time.

I will let you know how they are getting on.  I miss them being best friends.

I am going to read some other blogs now because I’ve got a bit behind on how all of our other tripawd friends are getting on.  I hope They are all well.

No news was not good news. 

We thought Leila was doing really well. She seems happy and back to her old self, but the blood test she had last week showed that one of her 2 clotting factors is still quite low – below the normal range. Her red blood count is a bit low as well but she is making new red blood cells so they are less concerned about that.

This basically means that they are still not sure what is wrong with her.    The next course of action is steroid treatment twice a day in case her body is attacking itself.  Both the local vet and the city vet agreed on this treatment.  Because this will lower her immune system she also has antibiotics in the evening.  Both are in liquid form.  8ml of the steroids has to be put in her food.  Luckily a bit of undrained tuna mixed in and she’s happy. My consolation is that this time she doesn’t know she is sick. She seems to be feeling fine and is enjoying doing all the cat things she did before.  Except going outside. That is off limits again in case of infection. 

I have also had to stop volunteering at the cat rescue centre in case of infections, but I have an update on the angry cat I mentioned in my last post.  Thanks to a lot of hard work and patience by the regular staff, he overcame his fears and became quite sweet and affectionate. He has already found a new home at the local radio station! Good news all round there.  

In leg-related news, Leila is doing really well. She is using her bad leg most of the time and movement is increasing.  She can extend it most of the way but flexing still has more to work on.  Usually she tucks it back and under her when she lies down it today I saw her as she is in the photo below.  It looks a bit awkward but it was progress enough for me to photograph.

[Seems like I can’t get the photo right now.  Stupid Internet.  I’ll add it when I can]

So in summary, we are hopeful that the steroids will cure whatever is wrong with her, and her leg is still doing well.

I hope everyone else is doing well.