Nearly a week home

Charlotte has been home nearly a week, and while she is slowly healing, things are still not quite right.

On the positive side, the clot in her eye is beginning to break down and a gold iris is beginning to show through. We aren't sure if the gold will eventually turn to blue, but there are positive signs that she still retains some sight in the eye.

On the not so positive side, Oscar is still acting aggressive and hostile towards Charlotte. There have been some improvement, but I think the stress of the situation has started to wear on her. When I got home yesterday, Charlotte was hiding under the sofa in the living room. She wouldn't come out from under it until I locked Oscar outside the room. The rest of the evening she was acting aloof and unaffectionate. She was not interested in playing or being petted. In the middle of the night, she had quite a bad sneezing fit. She began to lick her paws and rub her nose/face. This graduated into a constant and obsessive licking of her front right paw which kept on until this morning.

We began to worry she was suffering from depression, but after doing some research online the licking seems indicative of stress. We have decided to keep them apart again, and hope this helps Charlotte feel at ease being in the house. It's been a nonstop battle with life getting back to normal.

Thursday Update

Well, it's been a week since the accident, and I'm happy to say that Charlotte is finally home! Coming home has been a bumpy ride, though. Oscar has not received Charlotte very warmly. We aren't sure if it's the way she smells, the fact that she doesn't look quiet the same, or a combination of the two. He's been quiet aggressive towards her, and as it stands they are currently kept in separate rooms. I think it's made Charlotte quiet sad, and she refuses to leave my lap if he is around.

She needs a medicated ointment on her eye every three hours, so it makes it a bit tricky with work. I'm having to juggle things around. I'm staying with her for the first part of this morning as I want monitor how much she is sleeping (she doesn't need the medication when she has the eye closed).

Again, I want to thank everyone's charity towards Charlotte. It's really helped keep us encouraged in light of everything.

Sunday Update

We wanted to thank everyone for the continued love and support. Charlotte is showing great signs of improvement over the last 48 hours. We are pretty confident she will be able to keep her eye, and the assessment of her health from this evening's visit was very encouraging. We were a little worried on Saturday as she still wasn't eating and it looked like a feeding tube was in her very near future. However, her healthy appetite reappeared today and I was even able to feed her a bit myself on this evening's visit.

As you can see from the photo, she now has a cone in place as she was starting to scratch at her eye. However, her IV is finally out, so no more pain medication or fluids which is just one more step towards getting her home.

Tomorrow she goes under sedation again to have her jaw reset, the pressure of her eye measured, and possibly x-rays on her right leg which seems to be bothering her. We are hoping if everything goes well we will have her home on Tuesday!

And just for an interesting, nosey side note , the little pooch next to Charlotte was in for having ingested cannabis!

Friday Update

I want to thank those of you who have sent both love and money to Charlotte. I can't express how much these gestures mean to both Joe and me. It's amazing to have the love and support of such amazing friends.

As for the update, we dropped in on Charlotte this evening after her surgery. The vet showed us photos of how the top of the inside of her mouth was completely split open. I got the impression it was an unusual injury, as he seemed a little amazed by it (and I doubt vets usually take photos of animal's injuries with their camera phones!). She's lost all the teeth on the right side of her mouth, which I suspect was probably a way to wrangle her way into a lifetime of wet cat food!

The good news is that her eye is definitely beginning to clear. When we brought her in yesterday it was filled with blood and so swollen she couldn't close the lid. Today we could just make out her pupil, though the cornea it is still very cloudy. The vet said that she seemed to show signs of sight, so fingers crossed she still has some vision. Even if she keeps the eye, we will need to keep on alert as she will have an increased risk for future tumors and glaucoma.

She was very affectionate when we arrived and wanted lots of head rubbing. She was also making a weird growling noise the whole time, and we weren't sure if that's her purr damaged by the whole in the roof of her mouth, or she was upset by the yelping dog below her.

She still looks pretty pitiful, but is on a drip so hopefully she's not in too much pain.

Charlotte's Accident

Last night was going a bit strangely anyways. Joe's work has been overwhelmingly busy lately, and when he called to say he wouldn't be home until after 9:00PM I wasn't exactly surprised. I spent most of the evening editing our photos from Greece at a desk in our second bedroom. The cats were restless. I could tell they were stressed about Joe not being home by now (especially Oscar), and kept coming up to me and meowing in a strange sort of way.

Around 10:00pm. I heard my phone beep with a new text message. It was from Joe saying he was finally headed home, and he had eaten dinner at work. Since I had been waiting until he was home to eat, I decided to head to the kitchen quickly make myself something eat before bed.

I had the front windows open, as our flat seems to stay warm no matter the time of year. Since we've moved into the flat, Charlotte has had a penchant for walking out onto the window sill. We used to scold her, afraid that her catty senses might fail sending the three stories down. But after nearly a year of her insistence at sitting out there (and no accidents) and the guilt of keeping her confined indoors, Joe and I had both relaxed into letting her out.

Charlotte was milling about while I was cooking. I remember giving her a bit of cheese, and turned around to the stove. Suddenly, I heard this pained meow from far away. I thought it was coming from outside, and stuck my head out to have a look at the street below. I heard it again.... it sounded like Charlotte. I called her name and received a pained meow in response. In complete denial, I ran through the house calling her name. The meows from outside continued and soon Oscar was meowing in worried response. When she didn't appear from any of the bedrooms, I quickly grabbed my phone, shoes, and keys and ran out the back door. I called Joe's mobile and franticly told him I thought Charlotte had fallen out of the front window. He was still trying to make sense of what I was saying when I saw her. She was curled up on a cashpoint which is inset into the wall three-stories below our window. As I ran to her, I realized she wasn't ok. Her right eye was a bloody mess and her chin was split open from the fall. Joe was telling me she was alright, but all I remember was screaming that she wasn't alright that there was blood everywhere.

I scooped her up and ran back in the house. After putting her down in the bathroom, she scampered into the second bedroom to hide under the dresser. I took this as a positive sign, as she wouldn't have moved so quickly if she was in a huge amount of pain. I tried to calm myself as I phoned Joe again to discuss what to do next. He was still about 30 minutes from arriving home, and I didn't want to wait that long to take her to the emergency vet. We both decided it was best that I take her, even though it's not legal for me to drive on my own. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait long before Joe arrived at the hospital. Joe took over from there, as I decided to wait outside in the waiting room. I was feeling sick and having trouble seeing her in her present state.

The veterinarian confirmed that she would likely lose her eye and her jaw was probably fractured. She needed costly scans to check for internal bleeding and other broken bones. We left her at the hospitable to be stabilized and x-rayed; hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. They called around 2:00am to let us know the x-rays revealed she has no internal bleeding and no broken limbs. I cried in relief at hearing the news. However, she does have a fracture in her maxilla and a dislocated mandible, and the right eye might need to be removed.

Charlotte is currently set to have surgery on her jaw this afternoon. We are giving the eye a little bit longer, to see if there is any improvement. Our current medical costs are over £1300 ($2080), and will increase if she needs any post operative aftercare. To help with medical costs, I am putting some of my photos up for purchase on Etsy:

Or if you hate my photos, but love me, Charlotte, or cats in general please donate here:

We are by no means hoping to cover all of our expenses, but only to offset some of the burden. Thank you for your ear and support. Lots of love from Amanda, Joe, Oscar, and of course Charlotte.