For Thursday, June 18, 1998 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 717 words

Pet project

Scatman is convalescing in our bedroom. He's the cat who disappeared for eight days and returned with a dislocated hip. He had quite a bit of surgery and is now holed up under our bed, concealing two large scars across his shaved pelvis.

The vet said too much scar tissue had formed to get the ball back into the socket. The ball had to be cut off the femur. Scatman's leg is now held on with scar tissue and muscle. He drags it along behind him from the bed to the food dish to the litter box and back again. The toes of the injured leg drag upside-down.

Every few steps he sits down to rest awhile. He always did that before. Perhaps he is feeling better.

For the first couple of days he stayed under the bed. We had to sprawl on the floor and reach underneath to pet him, which made him purr, but didn't draw him out. Only the scent of Sheba cat food, and the passing of it, lured him from his cave.

Today he came out and slept in the middle of the bedroom floor, in the square of sunlight that poured in through the window. Lennie, our sheepdog, and the real subject of this column, slipped through the door and gave Scattie a close whiff. Scatman ignored him. He always did that before, too. Maybe he is feeling better.

Lennie's not feeling too good right now. He has been a conehead for two weeks. He's wearing one of those round, plastic shields. He looks like a dog flower. He also has his head bandaged up tighter than the Invisible Man.

This adventure started when we took him in for his spring shave. The groomers discovered a hematoma in one ear -- that's when a vessel breaks and a pocket of blood forms under the skin. It needs to be drained to protect the ear from crinkling up like a plastic bag held too close to a fire.

So the vet inserted a drain pipe and taped the ear flat across the back of Lennie's head. "Return in three weeks and we'll remove this." He gave us a cone for emergency use in case Lennie tried to remove his bandages. The second Lennie entered the house he began dragging his head across the carpet, digging at the tape with his paws, running in circles.

On went the cone. While we were laughing, he turned and romped through the house, banging into walls, getting stuck in doorways, knocking over pictures, vases, glasses, wrecking the place. Out he went to his bed in the garage. Every hour or so we heard clanging and banging.

So we now have a three-legged cat and a one-eared dog. Felix, the old mama cat, keeps her distance. I guess she's afraid she'll be asked to baby-sit.

But it doesn't end here. Lennie hadn't messed himself up enough yet. Perhaps he figured if Scatman could earn a bedroom suite simply by losing a leg, he could at least earn a place in the hall.

After a few days, he tore off his bandages. Don't ask me how. He's Houdini. We took him to the vet for re-bandaging. The vet figured he'd be better off without a bandage. Give the wound some air.

So, Lennie returned without tape or cone -- a free dog, briefly. He sat in the hall and began shaking his head. The tube was still inserted. He kept shaking, shaking. We yelled, "Stop shaking." He stopped. He shook again. We looked. He had blood all over his head and ears. Blood was spattered on the walls and floor. On went the cone. He kept shaking. Soon his cone was filled with red swirls. He went back to the vet, who taped him down with a few rolls of extra wide. Only the ear canal was showing. We brought him home and started with no cone. What damage could he cause now?

Within half an hour, he had rubbed the skin raw on the inside of his ear and dragged it in the dirt. After a good peroxide sponging, he found himself back in the cone, and back in the garage.

All the while, Scatman is sitting in the sunlight, purring.