A month later, that tail cap came off. The skin underneath was raw-looking and very pink. The first day it was clearly bothering him, he didn't want us come anywhere close to him. The second day he was more like himself.
A couple days after that, he groomed it and it started bleeding. Not life-threatening bad, but drip-on-the-carpet bad. Luckily, Aurora was hiding in the other room at the time. We moved the furniture around a lot to get him contained in case we needed to bring him to an emergency vet. This ended up not being the case, but we arranged to bring him in the next morning.
We had hosted a guest over the weekend and had taken the linens off the mattress that day, and during this drama we ended up taking the mattress off the bed frame and folding that frame up like a tent. And for some kind of hiding spot, put a freshly laundered sheet over the top and stuck a covered cat bed inside.
The room looked very different and altogether not terribly welcoming, but we weren't worried about that at the moment.
At around 4am, I woke up and couldn't sleep, so I went to see how Philip was doing. He was in the one hiding spot the room provided (the bed frame tent fort) and came out for head scratches and he wasn't bleeding anymore.
While I was hanging out with Philip, guess who appeared in my peripheral!
She got extra brave and slunk past me to get to the food dish, which she clearly felt Philip was hogging.
She growled and hissed at him, but he handled it like a pro. He looked at her, but didn't growl or hiss back at her, but he also didn't give up his spot at the food dish.
Later in the morning, we bundled him up and brought him to the vet. The highlight of that trip for me was finding this treasure in the waiting area:
The visit went well. He got a proper bandage on his tail, a cone to keep him from messing with the bandage, some antibiotics, and some ointment for his weepy eyes. And apparently some fun drugs, because he was a little loopy for a while afterward.
And he even felt playful! This is a first, he's never purred and gently bunny kicked my hand before.
Aurora and Philip are fostered in Cambridge, MA through the Gifford Cat Shelter in Brighton. Please contact them if you are interested in either of these cats!
