KILLER KITTY!
According to the hospital consultant a cat’s tooth is like a hypodermic needle: long, thin and sharp, capable of piercing the flesh to deliver its toxic load. Cats are pretty hopeless at oral hygiene. Felix was no exception.
He first turned up early in spring. We called him Felix because he looked rather like the cat who figured in those wacky black-and-white silent cartoons of the 1920s.
It was evident that he’d tapped into the cats’ telegraph advising neighbourhood moggies that the people at Dunphilanderin’ are a soft touch, with a cupboard full of ring-pull cans packed with nourishing feline meals.
We’ve kept cats for years. Three are currently resident. Ruby is a lively tortoiseshell who was plucked one night six years ago from a puddle in a rainstorm, drenched and very small.
Jingle is twice Ruby’s size and easy-going, which seems to irritate her. He was another stray kitten, found in a field one dark December day in 2005, all tail and clingy. Why Jingle? Because he arrived just in time for Christmas.
Fluffy is the latest arrival, migrating from next door when Bert the Labradoodle arrived and refused to stop becoming enormous.
This place has been home to a long list of cats; some of them are still here, buried in the garden. There was Dennis who was good at climbing but never really mastered the technique of descending, and was helped down many a tree. His sister Nancy had retriever tendencies, bringing back thrown balls of rolled-up newspaper. Vic became The Bread Man, scaling the wall to deliver crusts stolen from the neighbours’ garden, while it was Bernie who climbed the wisteria to knock on our bedroom window in the dead of night.
Felix was cautious to begin with, keeping his distance, but gradually coming closer, eventually feeding but with a wary eye. Weeks passed. The occasional pat on the head was permitted. And then I made to pick him up. After all, we knew each other well enough by now, didn’t we?
We didn’t. He sank his hypodermic tooth into the base of my right forefinger. The blood that poured out was quite alarming. More alarming still was what he’d injected into the knuckle joint. For a start, there would very likely be a dash of tetanus, as rife here in Norfolk as country music.
The hand, swollen to twice its normal size, was tender to the touch. Holding a pen was impossible, and it would be a while before I made any more bread. At the GP’s they gave me an anti-tetanus jab and a course of antibiotics. But after two weeks the wound refused to heal. They referred me to the hospital where I thought they’d lance the finger, dress it, and send me home.
They had other ideas. Their worstcase scenario: I could lose the finger. They found me a bed with a sign above it that warned Nil By Mouth. Next day, in a frock and kneelength socks, I was wheeled to the operating theatre.
The genial anaesthetist wondered what I might dream of.
‘How about Jeanie with the light brown hair…’ I said.
I woke to see the face of an angel, a tiny nurse with big brown eyes, bent close above me. My right arm was in an L-shaped foam sling suspended from a sort of gallows. My personal angel eased any pain, frequently checking my blood pressure and the supply of oxygen. I told her about Felix. She purred and told me she had cats too.
Next day I got parole, on condition that I turn up each Tuesday at the Hand Clinic. The waiting room was a thicket of bandaged hands held high, their owners having argued with the likes of chain saws, bacon-slicers, broken glass and sundry animal fangs. One amiable chap had lost the tip of his little finger to some carnivorous lout at a Radio 1 pop festival.
Cheerful affairs, these Tuesday sessions, cordial chats with nurses, consultants, house surgeons and physiotherapists, every one professional, thorough, considerate, and most turned out to be cat-owners.
But the microbes – Pasteurella multocida – were having a good time too and declined to leave the party. X-rays showed that they were attacking the bone, eating it away. Time for a second operation, this time under local anaesthetic; debriding, they called it. I could feel nothing, nor see what was going on, but I could sense it and hear it. Was that a file from B&Q? Not dissimilar, they said.
It’s 13 weeks since The Bite. At last, fingers crossed (ho, ho), the game would appear to be up. X-rays now show the bone growing back. I picture the cringing, demoralised, debilitated bugs begging for mercy.
As for Felix, I never blamed him for what happened. He’d continued turning up to be fed and cautiously patted – until the evening before the second operation. He appeared beside the bird table at the top of the garden. No amount of coaxing would bring him any nearer. I even opened a tin for him but when I looked again he was no longer there – gone, but decidedly unforgotten.
He first turned up early in spring. We called him Felix because he looked rather like the cat who figured in those wacky black-and-white silent cartoons of the 1920s.
It was evident that he’d tapped into the cats’ telegraph advising neighbourhood moggies that the people at Dunphilanderin’ are a soft touch, with a cupboard full of ring-pull cans packed with nourishing feline meals.
We’ve kept cats for years. Three are currently resident. Ruby is a lively tortoiseshell who was plucked one night six years ago from a puddle in a rainstorm, drenched and very small.
Jingle is twice Ruby’s size and easy-going, which seems to irritate her. He was another stray kitten, found in a field one dark December day in 2005, all tail and clingy. Why Jingle? Because he arrived just in time for Christmas.
Fluffy is the latest arrival, migrating from next door when Bert the Labradoodle arrived and refused to stop becoming enormous.
This place has been home to a long list of cats; some of them are still here, buried in the garden. There was Dennis who was good at climbing but never really mastered the technique of descending, and was helped down many a tree. His sister Nancy had retriever tendencies, bringing back thrown balls of rolled-up newspaper. Vic became The Bread Man, scaling the wall to deliver crusts stolen from the neighbours’ garden, while it was Bernie who climbed the wisteria to knock on our bedroom window in the dead of night.
Felix was cautious to begin with, keeping his distance, but gradually coming closer, eventually feeding but with a wary eye. Weeks passed. The occasional pat on the head was permitted. And then I made to pick him up. After all, we knew each other well enough by now, didn’t we?
We didn’t. He sank his hypodermic tooth into the base of my right forefinger. The blood that poured out was quite alarming. More alarming still was what he’d injected into the knuckle joint. For a start, there would very likely be a dash of tetanus, as rife here in Norfolk as country music.
The hand, swollen to twice its normal size, was tender to the touch. Holding a pen was impossible, and it would be a while before I made any more bread. At the GP’s they gave me an anti-tetanus jab and a course of antibiotics. But after two weeks the wound refused to heal. They referred me to the hospital where I thought they’d lance the finger, dress it, and send me home.
They had other ideas. Their worstcase scenario: I could lose the finger. They found me a bed with a sign above it that warned Nil By Mouth. Next day, in a frock and kneelength socks, I was wheeled to the operating theatre.
The genial anaesthetist wondered what I might dream of.
‘How about Jeanie with the light brown hair…’ I said.
I woke to see the face of an angel, a tiny nurse with big brown eyes, bent close above me. My right arm was in an L-shaped foam sling suspended from a sort of gallows. My personal angel eased any pain, frequently checking my blood pressure and the supply of oxygen. I told her about Felix. She purred and told me she had cats too.
Next day I got parole, on condition that I turn up each Tuesday at the Hand Clinic. The waiting room was a thicket of bandaged hands held high, their owners having argued with the likes of chain saws, bacon-slicers, broken glass and sundry animal fangs. One amiable chap had lost the tip of his little finger to some carnivorous lout at a Radio 1 pop festival.
Cheerful affairs, these Tuesday sessions, cordial chats with nurses, consultants, house surgeons and physiotherapists, every one professional, thorough, considerate, and most turned out to be cat-owners.
But the microbes – Pasteurella multocida – were having a good time too and declined to leave the party. X-rays showed that they were attacking the bone, eating it away. Time for a second operation, this time under local anaesthetic; debriding, they called it. I could feel nothing, nor see what was going on, but I could sense it and hear it. Was that a file from B&Q? Not dissimilar, they said.
It’s 13 weeks since The Bite. At last, fingers crossed (ho, ho), the game would appear to be up. X-rays now show the bone growing back. I picture the cringing, demoralised, debilitated bugs begging for mercy.
As for Felix, I never blamed him for what happened. He’d continued turning up to be fed and cautiously patted – until the evening before the second operation. He appeared beside the bird table at the top of the garden. No amount of coaxing would bring him any nearer. I even opened a tin for him but when I looked again he was no longer there – gone, but decidedly unforgotten.