cats - Rumple

	The saga of Miss Rumple's broken leg		We think it was caused by a fight with a fox - a tooth certainly went through her leg, and broke one of the lower pair of bones. The options for a 10 year old cat with a broken leg are surgery, or bandaging and waiting for it to heal. Surgery may bring complications, and the vet recommended bandaging. It's also slightly cheaper. A typical prescribed regime is four weeks bandaged and immobile, followed by two to four weeks bandaged around the house, four weeks unbandaged around the house, and then back to normal. In Miss Rumple's case, it was necessary to adjust this schedule as follows:- approximately four and a half seconds bandaged and immobile, two weeks of going backwards and forward to the vet's whilst they figured out a Rumple-proof way of attaching bandages, a further five and a half weeks bandaged and careering round the house in frustration, a few days of tentative escorted expeditions outside, and then back to normal. The 'back to normal' point is marked when you tell the cat off and it holds up the wrong paw for sympathy.

	This isn't as easy to remove as the last one...

	I've finished these magazines and I'm bored.

	The official advice is that the cat should rest and not climb. Rumple quickly demonstrated that compared to a little climbing, she was going to do herself more damage bouncing off the walls of any space she thought too restricted. The practical solution was to reposition the furniture so she could climb easily to see out of windows, without any big jumps or risk to the bandaged leg. When it came to going outside, she was very pragmatic. She had the sense to realise that she was vulnerable to attack and unable to defend herself effectively, so she stayed close to us and didn't stray until she was back to what she considered was full strength.
			How am I going to wash the other side...

	In the six months since the vet signed her off, she's been completely back to normal with no sign of anything other than a perfect mend. Being a fracture of the lower leg, the undamaged bone supported the broken one whilst it healed.
			Very little music has been written for a cat with 3 paws