Sunday, December 20, 2009

Ronaldo: The rest of the story

Our rehab cat with the broken leg acquired the name Ronaldo. (I was planning to have him neutered, so I figured he should have an extra-manly name to boost his self-image, and who is more manly than Cristiano Ronaldo?)


Ron, as he came to be called, faced a tough recovery. His leg needed surgery and the time lapse between the injury and the operation made the repair more difficult. He went crazy whenever I tried to change his bandage, so I had to take him on the long, hated car ride to the vet's place in Pondok Labu every 2 or 3 days. Finally I wised up and arranged to board him there for a while, which I think was easier on both of us.

Still, Ron is an intensely cheerful type, and he never lost his sunny personality. Even when he was groggy from anesthesia and obviously in pain, he would limp over and rub up against anyone who came to visit him.

Finally his incision healed and he came home.

It didn't take Ron long to get comfortable. Soon he was mooching around the kitchen trying to steal food, and snoozing just as flamboyantly as Susu. (I promise we didn't give him beer, though.)


I can't say Ron and Susu became fast friends, but from a growling and hissing start they came to a point of mutual tolerance. I think they would have been pals if we'd kept him. Their fights, which were never very convincing in the first place, were clearly turning into games by the end. And they trusted each other enough to doze in the same room.


But it's pretty silly for us to have one cat, nevermind two, so I put the word out on Facebook and e-mail. I was thrilled when my good friend Pinta said she wanted him.


Pinta took him to her mom's place on the southern end of town. Ron has a real house now on a quiet street. He eats a lot, sleeps on Pinta's old bed and generally seems to live like a king.

I think Susu missed him for a while. She used to sleep in his old cage. Besides the Ron factor, I think she liked having all those walls to lean up against.

Now we've moved, and the cage has gone into storage. It's already hard to remember what being a two-cat household was like.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So nice to hear rest of his story. And that it ended so happily!