What a day yesterday and today has been!

After visiting the vets with our dogs for some of their annual vaccinations we go home fed them gave them their parasite tablets, sorted ourselves out for the evening, dog playing and eventually settled and the cat outside somewhere.

Then without warning our male dog began being very sick. That was the parasite tablet back up then. I thought I was tempting my fate when I was told by the vet that he had to have 2 tablets, the poor little thing could stop being sick. Eventually he settled and before we knew, it was time for staring our ‘go to bed regime’. It started a little earlier last night as it dawned on us the cat wasn’t in her little cat cave, as is normal for the time of day.

So with the dogs needing to do their last outside comfort break before bed we all went outside, my partner and I calling the cats name and me frantically looking on an app to see where she is no the tracker. It was strange, normally when calling the cat she just appears within little time in the hope of having some extra food. Not tonight. The tracker was saying she was close by, in fact it said ‘Near You’ which only happens when my phone connects to her tracker via Bluetooth, therefore according to my phone she should be within a few meters.

The dogs were having a bit of a nose to ground run around the front garden, when they come across the drive gate. They could sense there was something on the other side, I could see nothing as the gate has a solid back and is around 1.8 meters tall. I clambered a large plant pot to look over the wall and railings. There she was, although it was a bit odd as normally by this stage have climbed around the side of the gate to get home. After getting the gate control from the villa and finally opening the gate it was apparent that the cat had sustained an injury.

I could see the cat was having difficulty moving, she seemed to be dragging her rear legs. I tried to help her by picking her up and it was apparent that she was in a huge amount of pain. After this everything was a bit of a blur. My partner and I decided within a relative short period of time that an emergency vet was needed.

We arranged to with the vet to go straight away to the clinic. I was petrified during the journey there that we was going to lose her. We arrived at around 10:45pm, greeted by the vet. Relatively quickly the vet confirmed that she needed to be sedated for an x-ray. Consent forms signed and she went to a more clinical area. We were asked to wait in the office. The time dragged, we the church bells chimed on the hour and half hour. With what seemed like an eternity the vet returned with news. Thankfully nothing was broken, but the vet confirmed there was a lot of inflammation on her one side and there didn’t seem to be any evidence of blood or breaking of the skin. The vet seemed to think it was possible that she may have eaten something that had caused this, what I don’t know. We left with medication, prescriptions and instructions of how to care for her.

Finally home, we try our best to get the cat comfortable. Think I got to bed around 2am. This morning we didn’t really notice any improvement. We go in to town to collect her prescription, from the famacía, the same place as I get my prescriptions. When I first came across this system for animal medication I was a little amused. Now it makes sense. Unlike the UK vets who generally administer prescriptions, the Spanish vets only administer a very limited amount of medication. Anything else then you take a prescription to a ‘Human’ farmacía. What I have discovered is that this system seems to keep animal medication affordable. Unlike in the UK where the vets seem to think you are fair game to be ripped off. I would imagine the medication I had for our cat would have cost in excess of £40-50 in the UK, here it cost 8.25€. So where exactly is this huge profit going in the UK.

Towards the middle of the afternoon, I think our cat seems to have turned a corner, thank goodness. She seems to be trying to move a little more. Although still not really eating or drinking.

We have tried to figure out what exactly has happened to her, but being a cat shes not really able to tell us. We have ruled a few things out, ie contact with a car, this just wouldn’t be realistic as we live so far in the country with not much traffic at night. Plus when I have looked on the tracker it doesn’t really indicate that she has been out on the road, just our garden and nearby gardens she can access directly from ours.

We had another look through her fur and skin this afternoon and did find a puncture mark, possibly a bite from another cat or dog. This did prompt my partner to recall that when we were out looking for our cat he did hear a dog growl and scuffle coming from a particular garden. A garden that contains a dog, who has form when it comes to frightening cats to death, on one occasion chasing a cat up a tree. With the owner doing nothing.

We’ll never really know what happened to our cat other than she has sustained a very traumatic injury.

22/03/24 en Almería