Emergency first-aid at midnight (the story of Zurik’s paw)

Last night, as we were locking up to go upstairs, we suddenly saw a lot of blood on the floor in the dining room.

It was quite shocking as there was A LOT of blood and blood-stained pawprints starting from the middle of the dining room (near the dining chair) leading out to the patio.

Only Ginger, Rosie, Heidi and Vincent were around and they did not look like they had any injuries on them.

So we followed the bloodied pawprints and it led to…a patio chair.

It was Zurik’s chair.

From the patio chair, the prints continued (but with much lesser blood) to the porch, out to the gate, and back to the patio.

There were a few sets of prints indicating that the injured cat had gone back and forth from the patio to the road and back to the chair.

It was quite scary, actually.

Wasting no time, I took a flashlight and went out in search of the injured cat.

It was either Zurik or Daffodil.

Up the road, I spotted a cat in the dark. So I followed and called out Zurik’s name.

Zurik came out and seemed very nonchalant about it, like, “Oh, hello….you out for a night walk too?”

He came to me and I carried him back but I did not detect any blood on him.

I was really worried that it might be Daffodil who was injured.

There WAS a lot of blood on the floor.

As my husband continued to look for Daffodil, I brought Zurik back to the house and put him down on the floor.

As Zurik walked, there were blood stains on his prints, so it was Zurik, after all. But there was only very, very little blood now, it was was drying up.

Daffodil, as it turned out, was sitting quietly on the dining chair, minding her own business, watching us go by.

So it was Zurik and my first guess is that he must have sat on our dining chair and his claw must have got stuck on the rattan netting as he was jumping down.

There was no fight. No war cries. Absolutely no sound.

Cats are tough. They do not whine.

Especially KGB-trained cats.

I had to clean Zurik’s wound, so I figured the best way to retain him would be to give him FOOD.

Very quickly, I opened a new can of Monge, scooped out a few spoonfuls and dropped 0.5ml of Vetri DMG into it.

Zurik ate it all up.

After he had eaten, I cautiously put him on the table and proceeded to check his paw.

It was dark, but I saw the injury. I think he was missing a claw.

Surprisingly, Zurik did not put up any resistance at all.

None. Zilch. Nada.

Seriously. Nada.

He let me pour saline over his injured paw and spray the pet spray onto it. I sprayed as liberally as I could. I didn’t want to meddle too much with the injury as I’m sure it would be painful. Also, it wasn’t bleeding profusely anymore. In fact, it was already drying up.

Zurik let me use the pet spray as much as I wanted. No harm done. It’s non-toxic and anti-bacterial.

Then, he went off.

This morning, all was well.

Zurik was already waiting for breakfast, sitting on his favourite patio chair.

For quite sometime now, Zurik has got into the good graces of the Bird Family. It all started with Daffodil grooming him. Then, Rosie and Ginger also followed and now, every morning, Zurik (yes, Mr Zurik) gets groomed by Daffodil, Rosie and Ginger.

There are more things in heaven and earth that is dreamt of in your philosophy.  

Miracles do happen, you know.

And many things defy our humanly deficient logic and intelligence.

I still gave him Vetri DMG.

I hope this is sufficient and does not warrant a stressful journey to the vet’s.

This is the injured paw. It’s the first claw from the left.

 

I didn’t expect it to be manageable, but it was…surprisingly.

I scruffed him with one hand, and used my other hand to spray on the injury. By letting his paw hang down from the table, I could get a good angle to spray. Why, I could even take this photo…

No emergency trip to the clinic for a tetanus jab for me! Mr Zurik put up zero resistance. Pinch me, someone! On hindsight, I do believe it was because there was no fear in me at that time as I was too concerned about caring for his wellbeing. No fear. No negative vibes. I guess that helps.

But having said that, remember the time when Heidi had a bad tooth? She behaved like a totally feral Godzilla and would have killed us if we had got close to her.

Appetite’s good, as usual. That’s good.

And he is still able to put the injured paw down.

Your best foot forward, eh, Mr Zurik?

Я все будет в порядке

I suppose so, Mr Zurik. After all, you are KGB, aren’t you?