A sad, sad day.

I guess I started this blog so I could share our day to day life with friends and family back in England, so it is only right that I should share the sad days as well as the happy ones. Fortunately our days are mostly happy ones, but there are a few less so, and today is one of those. It didn't start off too well because we knew that at 9.30 this morning we were taking Chico to the vet to have his leg amputated. It is now a month since his accident and there was no marked improvement to his foot. The vet was reluctant to do the operation because Chico is so young, but she tested him thoroughly this morning, she even got scissors and cut up between his toes and he didn't bat an eyelid, so there is definitely no nerve function in his foot. It hangs limply and just gets in his way. He bangs it on steps, and drags it around so that it is constantly sore and open to infection. So we had no choice really but to have it removed. The vet explained that she would take the whole leg from the shoulder, partly because it looks a lot better, and partly because if she left a stump, he would continue to injure it. So we left him there and she said she would phone us when he woke up from his anaesthetic.

However, prior to the 9.30 trip, it was my turn to get up to tend to the other animals, so I fed them all, let the cats out into the garden as usual, and took Miki and Foxy off for their long run. When I returned I was shocked to find Destino in the garden, dead. She was just lying on the path and Paco was sitting beside her, waiting for her to wake up and play some more. She had only just died as she was still warm and soft. There was no sign of any injury or of poisoning, so we took her down to the vet and she said she may have just had a heart attack. She was only one last week. However when we went back for Chico tonight, the vet told us she had a closer look at Destino and she thinks maybe she had been hit by a car, because she found blood stained froth in her throat which suggested punctured lungs. I am really surprised if a car hit her. Unfortunately cats are not trainable and there is absolutely no way of stopping them going on the road, but she never went beyond the garden of the house opposite, and was usually in our garden playing around the tubs of plants. If she was outside the gate and a car came, she shot back in, so whoever did it must have been travelling too fast for our little road. She was very special and I loved her to bits, so I am really sad to have lost her so soon.

And now back to Chico. We were told we could fetch him home just before 7.00 this evening. Ellen, (the vet) warned us before we went in, that it was a very big wound, which of course, it is, but as I told her, when you have brought up a family boys you learn not to be squeamish. She has done a good tidy job on it. At the moment his whole side is shaved, but once the hair has grown back, it won't look too bad. He is still asleep, and we could have left him at the surgery until tomorrow, but they don't open up until 9.30 and we didn't want him waking up and having a couple of hours tied up in a strange place, and in pain, so we brought him home. They lifted him into the back of the car on a blanket, and when we got home, a neighbour helped us do the same to get him out, and we laid him beside our bed so we can get to him easily in the night. He really yelped and screamed when he was moved, but he soon settled again, and I have painkillers and antibiotics to give him tomorrow. She says he should try to walk on it in a couple of days, and in two weeks or so, he will have his stitches out, and should be fine. So he's a poor old thing today, and I think tomorrow will be the hardest day, when he is fully awake, but hopefully he will then make good progress and soon be able to get on with his life.

So yes, it was a very sad day in the Perry household today. The animals are a part of our family, and to lose one leaves a big gap, and to see one in pain is hard, because you can't even explain to them what is going on, but hopefully there will be no more sad days for a while now.