Update on Santa and Sox

Good progress report for Sox (the current blocked bladder kitty), who's doing well following his operation and has an excellent chance of being able to live a normal life from now on, except that he will always need to be kept on a diet of wet food with no dry kibble. Not so good for Santa (collar wound), as the injury has opened up again and will probably need to be closed with a skin graft.

Nice, peaceful Christmas day

Wonderful! No calls at all. After the Christmas Eve frenzy I was bracing myself for even more impossible to solve calls over Christmas day itself, but fortunately it seems that everyone managed to have their disasters beforehand.

The animal clinic will be open as normal on Tuesday, closed on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, then back to normal opening times.

The Christmas Eve blues

Kicked off to a cracking start (excuse bad pun) with a kitten with probable broken bones in one foot (plant pot fell on his toe). As there's no RSPCA clinic session now until Saturday I agreed with the private vet that it wasn't fair on the kitten simply to give pain relief and wait until then, so we covered x-ray and support bandaging as well. If the x-rays suggest that the foot actually needs surgery the owner will go to our clinic on the Saturday.

Followed in short order by a vomiting dog (probably just an upset tum as she is fairly current with her vaccinations).

Next, and more worrying, an ownerless cat from Swavesey area with diarrhoea. She's not seriously ill, and the 24 hour vet was reluctant to have her occupying a cage over the whole of the break as the space will probably be needed for emergencies. The kennels where we board is completely full until some of the private boarders go home, and this is academic in any case as no-one is available for transport as Janine's car won't start. After some frantic phoning, I asked the vet to call the finder and ask if she would be prepared to have her back until after Christmas now the diarrhoea's been treated. To everyone's relief she was very understanding and drove in to pick up the cat. Annoyingly this one actually has been chipped, but it seems to have been done in America and none of the chip databases have any record of her owner's current address. Best guess is that she originally came from one of the bases and was either rehomed in Swavesey or got there by accident after hiding in a vehicle of some kind.

Santa, the cat with the collar wound is doing well, but needs to stay in for the moment as his wound is still draining. Yet another cat with a blocked bladder has been signed over to us as his owner couldn't cope and he's had his operation too and is also looking good.

And a kitten!

She's about nine weeks old, and black with white feet. Found in Isleham and taken to Swayne & Partners vets. She's not injured or ill, and if she'd been older we'd have suggested that she be returned to the place she was found, as it's most unlikely that a healthy adult cat in good body condition is lost or in trouble unless there are other factors (such as being found shut in a vehicle) which suggest a problem. That's not appropriate for such a small kitten, so we're boarding her at the vets over Christmas and will move her to our kennels in the new year if her owner doesn't turn up in the meantime. 

I'm wondering whether she belongs to someone staying at the marina for Christmas and managed to get out.

Happy Holidays - Summer ones, that is

If you plan to spend part of your Christmas break looking through catalogues of exotic places, please bear in mind that your pets' holiday arrangements need to be booked well in advance too. My spare room has two extra Christmas "guests" whose owners didn't realise that all local boarding kennels would be completely booked up a fortnight before the start of the break.

On the plus side, this has forced me to bite the bullet and relocate Nicholas to a pen in a busier part of the house and his neurotic reaction shows how necessary it was. After a day on hunger-strike, he's still complaining bitterly, but wolfing down his dinner and using his litter tray. He's still completely unaggressive, just very unhappy about enforced proximity to people. He must have been socialised at some point, because it's perfectly possible to pick him up (trembling like a leaf), and he makes eye contact when he cries asking to go back upstairs. After a bit of grumbling, "Why is that Cat making All That Noise," my own cats are ignoring him, which is a relief.