When we woke up yesterday morning, we were greeted by a cat curled up at the bottom of the bed. Usually when one of us goes to step over Smudge, she bolts, but this time she didn’t. Jane got down and had a closer look, Smudge was clearly out of sorts. At first she was holding her leg funny, not wanting to put any weight on it, and as Jane went off to phone the vets, I noticed it looked like she had blood coming out of both her ears. At that point we thought it was either a stroke or she’d been hit by a car, she was just curled up, not wanting to move, staring blankly at us. We got her in a box and took her to the vets, where she acted like nothing at all had happened, making us look like mad people. She even hopped down from the examination table to the floor at one point, so much for us thinking her legs hurt! The vet decided that it looked most likely that she’d got in a fight with another cat – I do hope it came off worse than my girl! The blood coming out of her ears transpired to be cuts, and she’s got a little nick on one ear too. She looks tough rather than beautiful now. Ah, who am I kidding, she’s still beautiful.
She seems fine now. The vet gave her a shot of antibiotics to stop any infection, and a shot for the pain, she just seems to want to hide away and recover now. She’s already been back outside, briefly, and after a nice cuddle I have ascertained that she has no other scratches or wounds anywhere. I’m proud of her for defending the territory, but I’d rather one of the big boy cats do the defending next time!
