I consider myself a good cat mom. I feed my three cats (actually 1 cat & 2 skitty kittens) quality food (Wellness, Solid Gold, and Holistic Select at the moment), I take them to the vet regularly, I give them lots and lots of loves, and I try to keep them out of harm's way.
But no matter how much I anticipate all the harm that can happen, little Rocket seems to find a way to get herself into trouble, and I'm talking serious trouble.
Let's start with Accident #1.
Rocket and Rosie, age 9 weeks old, are racing around the house with their usual evening energy burst. The girls (the two-legged variety) are in bed asleep and John and I are in our offices upstairs working. At about 10pm, when I'm deep in the delights of claims data, I hear this distant but distinct "meoof" and I had this immediate and awful knowledge of what had happened.
Rocket had run right through the bannisters on the first floor and fallen 9 feet on to the tiled entryway floor below! Meoof indeed :(
I'd seen the kittens running around at the top of the stairs and it had fleetingly crossed my mind that perhaps they could fit though the gaps but didn't think more of it (we had the bannisters put in to regulation when we moved in the house 3 years ago so the gaps are very narrow). Retrospectively, I imagined Rocket running right through a gap to thin air and dropping like a stone with a Wile E. Coyote look on her face but that's just my way of coping with my feeling of being a bad mom and allowing this to happen. But I digress...
I ran downstairs and saw Rocket awake on the floor but in a dazed state with her head up just staring ahead. I carefully picked her up and felt along her body for painful spots and there were none. I put her on a chair and checked her eye dilation compared to Rosie's (who was rather "helpfully" trying to play with poor Rocket at the time) and all looked well. But when she started walking, she was staggering around and did not seem herself so off we went to the emergency clinic at 10:20 pm.
Thankfully Rocket turned out to be fine but she did have to stay overnight just to be sure her low hemoglobin levels were normal for a kitten, not from internal bleeding. Apparently she snuggled in the Board-certified specialist's hoodie all night, happy as can be. The bill ended up at around $350 for that episode.
BTW, when I got home that night, John had wrapped the bannisters upstairs in plastic wrap - this is not going to happen again!
Ironically, given that I'm the CEO of a pet insurance company, none of the veterinary costs were covered by Rocket's pet insurance policy as she was still in her 2 week waiting period. Even with perfectly random accidents, the waiting period applies. For future though, given this rather rocky start to her life, I think we're definitely going to be needing the accident portion of the insurance for sure!
I'll write about Accident #2 tomorrow - I'm still recovering from that one.
[picture is Rocket posing at the top of the plastic-wrapped bannisters - not the sharpest tool in the shed that one! But we love her even so]
