Cat Tales

My calico Latte is the friendliest, most talkative cat of the bunch. She is the cat that doesn’t mind being held or having her belly scratched.

About midnight one day I wandered downstairs to use the bathroom and noticed Latte sitting on the back of the chair with a strange look on her face like she was grimacing. It looked like she had a cleft lip, which she does not have.

As I got closer I noticed little specks of blood around that area. With mom’s assistance, we took her into the bathroom and tried to get her to open her mouth. It looked like her top K9 tooth was broken or was shoved upward. Her lip was quite swollen and the way she was pawing at it, drooling and constantly licking, it had to be pretty painful. I gave her some of Bigfoot’s (another cat in the bunch) pain medication to get her through the night.

We called the vet with the intention of leaving a voicemail to have them call us in the morning to see if we could get her in ASAP that day. Unknowing it switches over to an emergency line at night, the vet called us back that night and told us to bring her in the next morning and they would get to her as soon as they had a chance.

The next morning I couldn’t find Latte to save my life. I fed the other cats and began the house-wide search. Struggling to find her I went back in the kitchen to check on the others when she magically appeared. She was trying to eat her wet food, but that was too painful for her.

The second she saw me, she took off. This cat NEVER runs from anyone, let alone hides. This cat purrs when I trim her claws. After seeing her run into my office I shut the door to keep her in there long enough for me to get dressed and grab the carrier. At least she went in the carrier with no issues.

During the entire car ride to the vet, she meowed and howled. She was not a happy cat.

A few hours later, my mom called to check on her. The vet explained what had happened.

Latte somehow sunk her top K9 into her top lip and it was stuck there....she bit her own lip. Why? How? I have no clue. She had to be sedated to fix the issue.

She didn’t even make a sound the entire drive home.

It was hilarious, however, when I let her out of the carrier. She couldn’t walk straight and would fall over as the sedation hadn’t completely worn off. She tried to jump a few times to reach her food bowl and that ended horribly. I was laughing too hard to stop her. I did give her a bowl of food once I calmed down. She was so groggy and ate extremely slowly. She even nodded off once or twice in her bowl but kept going back for more. I could tell she was famished.

She is doing fine now. She has a little scab on her lip and has to take antibiotics for the next two weeks but is otherwise pretty much back to normal.

I just hope this isn’t going to be a common occurrence.