It Happened In a Flash :(

Our black and white tuxedo kitty Caesar

So, time to talk about one of the things in our life that I wish didn't happen.

Our poor Tuxedo cat, Caesar, had his leg broken.

I wish I could say it was a car, or he fell outside, or got chased by another animal. But no, not unless you count my 5 year old son an animal.

The alarm went off early on that Friday morning. I had been up even earlier showering the vomit off of my nearly two year old while my husband changed his sheets. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep. So I got up, went to the bathroom, and crashed back into the bed. My husband would wake me up after his shower. I was just dozing off when I heard a scream, and a crash, and Timothy, my 8 year old running through the house. I opened my tired eyelids, my body reacted a bit slower, that wasn't a typical scream.

Timothy was at the foot of my bed... "Mom, Alexander just threw Caesar down the stairs, and he's hurt. I think. He won't use his leg." I violently shook away the sleep in my brain as I scrambled out of bed. Of course, I thought, the one day I lay back down.

I ran out to Caesar and inspected him. He hobbled through the house quickly, but he definitely was not putting any pressure on his back leg. Oh my gosh.

I scooped him up, trying not to hurt him. I touched the pads of his paw lightly. He was growling, not from my touch, but from the pain (and I'm sure the trauma). How could this have happened? This is the absolute last thing we needed.

Financially, we're generally OK. Lately, with food prices, we're on the lower end of OK, but we can still have a few luxuries. But, as I found when I retuned to work following my maternity leave, they had coded my timecard incorrectly and I owed the company money. In addition, we had several left over expenses from having a baby, and an emergency visit that ended with us being told our five year old Siamese had heart failure, which essentially is why Caesar became part of our family.

So there I sit with a broken cat, praying that his clearly broken leg really isn't broken, trying to comfort him, yelling to my husband about what happened, who went strait to the five year old, sitting in the chaos, worrying about what it's going to cost us, which I don't know for sure, but I know it's alot.

Every bit of the noise, the chaos, the questions, the growling, the worry feels like an enormous weight on my shoulders.

What do I do with this broken cat?

The poor guy is still growling. Any other cat would have turned around, scratched the heck out of me and run off by now, but Caesar is a really special cat. So he sits in my lap, my arms supporting his back legs, growling his head off while also leaning into me like I am the only thing keeping him upright.

Seriously, I've had cats my entire life. This little guy is a joy.

I let him down, he crawls under the table, much faster than I think he should be able to go. Step one, get the younger kids out of the way.

We make lunches, change diapers, threaten the five year old within an inch of his life, (only partially kidding), and load the kids up with my husband who takes the 2 year old to daycare and the 5yo to camp. The baby goes along for the ride. I log into work because, in addition to now owing the company money, I have no PTO for the remainder of the year. Not a good welcome back to work present. While I'm doing my must-dos at work, I'm really thinking about Caesar. In between those must-dos I am calling different vets and animal organizations to see if anyone can help us. The low cost clinics that could help are booked into next month, well, it was worth a try. Everyone else refers us to the emergency vets. The best thing we can do for Caesar now, they say, is to put him into a kennel. We try, and without a ton of struggle, he allows us to put him in the larger of the two.

Our sweet baby.

Poor thing joins the family, then we end up out of town unexpectedly for two weeks and then we come home and his leg is broken by my son.

In the end, we got his leg fixed. We opted not to amputate which was the main suggestion of the emergency vet. Poor guy is in a cast for 3 weeks, and a crate for 8-12 weeks. We've tried to make that better by building him a "dog run" in our office out of an old playpen with a twin sheet covering it, he's pretty content there. I crawled in there with him earlier today to give him his medicine and he gave me a better welcome than my husband gives me. He rolled all over the place, purred loudly, rolled on his back so I could pet his belly, made sure I knew he was happy to see me. Ten minutes later I was still sitting there, him avidly purring and twisting and loving on me.

The other end was Alexander's punishment. I still don't know what to do with this kid. We pulled something on him that we'd done with the other kids and took everything out of his room. All of his toys, books, etc. We left his bed, a pillow, a blanket, his clothes, and two books. He didn't even act like he cared. We stopped him from seeing his grandparents over the weekend. He lost swim time. Not a tear.

It's scary.

That ADHD diagnosis that I've been thinking he needs (we have 3 other ADHD kids), but I've been putting off, he has a doctor's appointment now. Time will tell.

For all the moments as Mom's we wish didn't happen, we still stand tall.

Cheering you on through the chaos,

Kristian