Dulcie’s Story. (Part 2)
posted in Cat Stories |About 6 months after the episode with the noose, I got a ‘phone call at work one Thursday morning. It was Peter to say that he’d found Dulcie on his way to work, and it looked like she’d been hit by a car. I dropped everything grabbed my bag and keys and headed for the door. Fortunately my colleagues knew me well enough to understand the garbled message I muttered over my shoulder as I was leaving. When I got home Peter had managed to get Dulcie indoors and rung the vet to let him know we were on our way.
We left Dulcie with the vet for tests and X-rays just before lunch. As there was nothing much else we could do we each went back to work. Later in the afternoon I rang to check on her progress. I was amazed and pleased to hear that we could collect her at teatime.
Sadly this feeling of elation was short lived. When we arrived at the vet we were told that we’d been given the wrong message. Dulcie had been seriously injured and was currently on a morphine drip for the pain. We were devastated. X-rays had shown that her left back leg was broken as was her pelvis. It wasn’t clear at this stage what internal damage there had been so they needed to keep her for observation.
What a long night that was. The following day the vet told us that as far as he could see there was no internal damage. As regards the broken pelvis and leg, we had 2 choices. We could agree to an operation that would pin her broken bones together, but this would be a painful procedure, and she would have to spend several weeks with rods protrudng from her body.
The second option, which he recommended, was to do nothing. Take her home, keep her confined and let nature take its course. I was very sceptical about this but he assured me he had seen cats, worse than Dulcie, back climbing trees. I must admit, I wasn’t convinced, but this is what we decided to do.
Peter built a small pen in the sitting room, about 3 feet square and 2.5 feet high. In it we placed Dulcie, along with her food, water, bed and litter tray. We would sit her with us in an evening, but the rest of the time she lived in the pen. Each week we took her back to the vet for a check up.
Then one morning when I got up, Dulcie was sat in the middle of the room. Had we forgotten to put her to bed last night? No. Dulcie had plainly decided that enough was enough, and climbed over the side of her pen to freedom. She was walking again by now and the vet said we should just let her decide the speed of her recovery from now on. So the pen was no more, but it had served its purpose.
It was several months before I dared let her go outside again, and when I did she was so excited. Her tail fluffed out like a bottle brush which is always a sign that she is very happy. I followed her around the garden just to make sure she was OK, and gradually things got back to normal.
She now has one leg shorter than the rest and walking upstairs she limps badly, but when hunting in the garden, you’d never know she had a problem. And yes, she can climb trees.
