Chicken’s Corner: Wounded

More cat news around here, as we continue to funnel money directly into our local vet clinic. Chicken came home with a claw missing and after a while it got infected, so Jon had to bring him in. He came home with a cone of shame, and to make it all the worse, it was a dog cone. He’s been so demoralized and disgusted by it that it’s made my week. I’ve been trying to hold back my laughter and delight as he skulks around, knocking into things with his bone cone.

Tuna has been living it up now that Chicken is totally vulnerable, and I have to admit so have I. Chicken has no choice now but to come to his humans for an ear rub and scratching and emotional support, and he’s so slow moving to as sometimes not be moving at all—he will knock his cone into a door or a bin or a chair and then freeze, trapped in his own coneheadedness—that Tuna will just be lurking behind him, sniffing sympathetically. Chicken has been accepting our tender ministrations like the terrible sport he is, grouchy and annoyed and displeased. I’ve been feeding Chicken some of Tuna’s cat treat go-gurts, which I had purchased in bulk at the start of Tuna’s terminal diagnosis but that Tuna can now only have limited tastes of since his steroids have made him gain weight and he has some other organ problems. It’s gone from “give him as many treats and fatty foods as he’ll take, the poor baby” to “my, he’s gotten a bit chunky now hasn’t he.”

Chicken has been pathetically licking the tubes while glaring at me self-piteously from inside his cone. He will accept me, his servant, squeezing this goopy paste directly onto his tongue only because he must, and he certainly will not enjoy it.

He has to stay inside for the next little while, since he’s on a course of antibiotics, and I’m not even sure why he still wants to go out. He can’t even make it up the stairs without knocking into the next stair up with his cone, he would not make it down (or up) the fire escape, much less survive a raccoon.