Hold on tight to the rest of your lives.

So, where were we? Ah yes, Magnus and recuperation. After all of our positive thinking about keeping the tail in it's entirety, events rather made that decision for us. And it all started with a fish.

Magnus is very fond of fish and tends to lie on the kitchen floor looking winsome as it is being cooked, then he wraps himself around the legs of any person holding a plate of the finished meal. So it was one evening when a member of the of the household ( to save his blushes he can remain anonymous, but his name rhymes with Archie ) was walking from the kitchen holding his plate of fish, Magnus following close at his heels. He closed a door and a yelp ensued. Magnus shot across the floor and hid under the sofa. We thought that maybe a paw had been stood on. Closer examination showed us that something was not right. To our horror, that something was Magnus' tail, half of which was still in the kitchen door. Poor old boy, there was no feeling in the top of his tail so he hadn't noticed that it was caught in the door and when he moved it had snapped, leaving him with a stumpy bit. The skin where the dislocation occurred had died although we couldn't see that through the fur and it broke when pulled. It looked awful but Magnus seemed relatively unfazed and he continued the quest for fish as we phoned the vet.

Two days later the mog went in to get the tail tidied up and bandaged. This meant going under anaesthetic and a day at the vets. Archie collected the boy and he seemed fine, albeit a little wobbly on the legs. An hour or two later though things were very different. Magnus suddenly changed, began to drool and make strange noises and then he collapsed. He lay on the floor for what seemed like ages, not moving at all, blank eyed and breathing weakly. I really thought that the stress of the tail saga had been too much and this was the end. Then, all of a sudden Magnus came to and made his wobbly way up the stairs. We scooped him into the cat basket and went back to the vet who checked him all over. The vital signs were fine and the conclusion was that the sedative had caused him to have something like an epileptic fit - hence the falling unconscious. We spent the rest of the night watching him very carefully and I've never been so glad to have him nip me on the ankle when I went into the kitchen the next morning.

All in all the Mog has been through it in these last weeks. The bandage is off his tail and the stitches come out in a week or so. He seems to be doing fine. Me? I'm a nervous wreck!

Next time, no cat talk and some knitting. Honest.