We woke up yesterday morning to a limping Hippo. Something was clearly wrong with his right front paw, which he would hold up piteously in between limping along. The situation was not bad enough to prevent him from making some small jumps, but I figured if I waited to see what would happen, I’d only end up with yet another valid excuse to miss work on Monday.
So I sucked it up and lugged him to the vet, where he was no longer limping. “I swear,” I told the vet. “He was limping five minutes ago at home!” She believed me, in part because who would lug a 22lb* cat in for fun, and also because apparently the adrenaline of the car ride can make cats forget their pain, plus he was kind of slinking around the exam room in fear, which masked the limping.
Sent home with a few doses of an anti-inflammatory and instructions to bring him back Tuesday for sedation and x-rays if he wasn’t better (along with an $88 bill), that darned cat was walking just fine by afternoon.
* We took advantage of the opportunity to weigh him and it turns out he has dropped from 22lbs 15 ozs in October to 22lbs 4 oz. That’s almost 3/4 of a pound, and while that may be a mere 3.3% for what has been a lot of trouble, I remind myself it is the equivalent of my losing 4.5 pounds, which is not too shabby. Then again, I’m not about 30% over my healthy weight. (Yikes.)
