Drama of the week

And now, for this week's instalment of drama...Perfect: it's Sunday night - historically the time of the disease-of-the-week TV movie.

(I'm honestly fighting with myself about whether to be worried about how much has been going wrong over the last 6 months-1 year. It's so completely illogical, but today, in the midst of this latest episode, I couldn't help but get anxious about all of this...what's next? Is there someone I should consult about all of this? Am I doing something wrong, for goodness sake?)

I generally let Diamond, the cat, out onto the deck in short supervised stints of about 5 minutes. She longs to be outside, but the issue is that if I let her out, she jumps over the deck onto the roof of the apartments below and from there, there is a threat of jumping all the way down to the ground - not good. Usually I can keep her from jumping over, but last night she made a run for it and jumped over. I spent five hours trying to get her to come back over - I was slightly incapacitated because of my crutch situation.

At one point she tried to jump back over to come in, but it's high - about 5 feet - and she couldn't get over. I watched her hang on the side and then fall back - I couldn't get at her. I felt bad. I didn't think much of it, but later realized that she may have hurt herself at that point. At midnight, when she really desperately wanted to come back in, she began yowling and growling in an Exorcist-like fashion, pacing, and intermittently putting her paws up as if to try jumping - but the yowling would increase when she'd do that. Finally she tried, and I was able to grab her little paws and pull her over - ouch, but there was no way she'd get over un-assisted. She was screaming. She came into the apartment crying in pain, and then tried to hide, and yowled Exorcist-like, and lay there panting. Finally I figured out that she was most sensitive around her little chest and shoulders - but they didn't seem to be broken or dislocated. At one point, she went from panting to lying on her side, totally still and barely breathing, and I thought she was dying and called an emergency vet (at which point she got up and went to her food bowl, all normal-like, and I called off the emergency!).

Long story short, Diamond spent a very uncomfortable night. She wanted to come up on my bed, but every time she'd put her little front legs up on the bed, she'd groan in pain - she couldn't jump up. It was HEARTBREAKING. And because I'm incapacitated, I couldn't go and pick her up.

First thing this morning, we took Diamond to the vet. He kept her there for the day so he could x-ray her and then let the sedation wear off. The good news is that nothing is broken. So it is some kind of soft tissue injury - ligament or tendon or muscle. She was given a pain shot and I have anti-inflammatory painkillers for her for the next few days. Poor thing threw up in the car on the way home, and again since she's been here. She's totally dopey after the sedation. She won't leave me. We napped - her lying on my chest - for two hours this afternoon. All she wants to do is to sleep it off in my lap. It's kind of heartbreaking, though I'm so happy to hear that nothing is desperately wrong.