Mary, queen of cats

So we took Mary to the vet to have her lump checked out. But somehow, the day after the previous post and three days after the appearance of said lump, it mysteriously disappeared. The lack of the lump was discovered just before we went to the vet. We took her anyway, just in case. The vet declared her as fit as a fiddle and fortunately Mary wasn’t too upset. The worst part was a thermometer up the bum which yielded a look that was a mixture between extreme embarrassment and anger. But once the offensive object was removed, she was just fine.

One remark I would like to make though – the day before we took her to the vet she scratched the area of the lump furiously which makes me believe that perhaps it was a ganglion. But who knows. This is Mary.

Since we came from the vet though, she has been acting strangely. Mary is not a very playful cat and only my husband ever seems able to get her in the mood. But lately, you look at her or move in her direction and she hops like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh and bobs her head back and forth like one of those cheap head bobbing dolls people tend to put on the dashboards of their cars. And then she would just attack the carpet. Last night it looked like she was trying to bite my husband’s pants.

Who knows where this behaviour comes from. As I said, this is Mary and there is a very good reason her name is what it is.

I am absolutely besotted with Mary. It is winter time and her fur is bountiful, thick and soft. And when we are not participating in our cold war, she is loving and just magnificent to cuddle. The cold war happens when for no reason whatsoever I have fallen out of favour and my partner is just the bees knees while I am nothing more than gum under a shoe.

We were going through a good patch, with plenty of love and purrs and cuddles, but I don’t know how popular I will be after her being locked up inside last night. It doesn’t matter that the decision to lock her up was made by my partner *and* I. Someone has to be blamed and it will most likely be me.
We had a very good reason to lock her up inside. Mary lost two collars (with tags) in three days. I don’t know how, or where, but I do know that she ain’t going nowhere without visible identification.

I went and bought two new collars with two new tags so we will have to wait and see whether these last.  Watch this space!

Take one wild guess what this post is about. The winning answer of course is another trip to the vet.

Christmas day, Mary’s new human friend, The Neighbour knocked on our door informing us that Mary had a wound on her shoulder blade and it was bloody.
We have been dealing with this particular wound for quite a while.  We have no idea how she got it. It looks like a graze of some sort. It is not a tear and it is not deep enough for stitched. And we couldn’t put on a Victorian Collar because the wound falls outside the area of the collar. Mary kept on scratching and scratching and it would heal and then just be bloody after she was done with it. We were stumped.

Being Christmas, the vet was closed and we had to wait until the 27th of December for the vet to open. The solution of course was something I never thought of – wrapping the back paw she does the scratching with. As per usual, Mary was really not happy.

Sometime in January the scab of the wound came off. I took off the bandages around her back paw thinking everything was finally over. I was sadly mistaken.  The day after I removed the bandage, the bloody wound was back. So back on the bandages went.  It has now almost been a month and the wound is almost healed. Mary in the meantime, has figured out the most impossible ways to remove the bandages, meaning we have to rebandage her foot every second day or so.

She also uses the bandage to her full advantage. When meowing in the morning to wake us up for food does not work, she loudly sits and picks the bandage with her teeth. She bites and pulls (hard) and then releases it with a loud snap of the teeth. That get us up in a flash.

The Wound

Back from the vet, the wound clearly visible

The bandaged paw

The bandaged paw