There are no small problems

Small Cat made his first visit to the vet since before he was officially mine, The last time he was weighed he was just over four pounds, today he was just over twelve pounds. This visit also marked the end my vow that he would never see the inside of a vets' office.

 In the year before I got him I spent entirely too much time in vets offices with the animals and I was emotionally and financially exhausted. I spent an inordinate amount of time standing in those offices getting either very bad or very expensive news.  I decided with this new animal that it was time for a change and that change was going to be a drastic reduction in vets visits.

So I decided that he was never going to the vet.  He got fixed by the SPCA and his shots from the county. Doggers'  primary care vet doesn't even know she has a little cat brother. Her surgeon does.

Now

I didn't even flip a coin. The surgeon is cheaper, easier to get to and stubborn post operative infection notwithstanding, I like him. Did I mention the cheaper part? I like cheap, a lot. If I had to break my vow and let Small Cat darken a vets doorstep, I was not going to pay a premium for it. Doggers  doggy internist is a good vet, a very good vet but I know if I took a gimpy cat in there I would have never walked out for $61 and they would have insisted on keeping him over night and running a grand worth of diagnostics on him to rule out spinal damage. I knew there wasn't anything broken and he wasn't refusing to eat or failing to groom or not voiding or any other red flags that I have been stopped by before. Pretty much as long as a cat is eating/grooming/voiding, they are still okay.

However, limping is a bad thing. We don't like that. Small cat wasn't actually limping yet but he was definitely pre-limping. I was also having a hard time trying to figure out which one of his legs was hurt because he seemed to be favoring both in turn.

After a couple of days of trying to figure out which hurt more, he settled on his right leg. The vet likes specifics like this. If you tell him the back end in general is wonky he starts thinking "spine" and starts adding zeros, "c/o NS leg pain, r/o FX" (complains of non-specific rule out fracture) is much, cheaper than  " c/o NS spine FX?" asking for any "rule out" is asking to empty your wallet.

It turned out I was wrong with my diagnosis and right. He was favoring both legs but the right leg was more hurt than the left but neither leg is really hurt-hurt. He does however have two knees that slip in and out of joint easily  with the right knee slightly swollen p which explains the  slight favoring and the general  back end wonkiness. He'll be fine and to help him on his way the vet gave us ten days of a liquid anti- inflammatory so we both get to find out how he handles being treated.