Boss Radio

When you're sitting in your comfy chair and really busy doing nothing it's amazing how fast you move when your mother suddenly complains that the back of her head is bleeding. I was over there faster than a cartoon roadrunner, and sure enough, there was blood all over the paper handkerchief that she was holding against it. As I tried to see where the blood was coming from I became aware of a red cat sitting on the back of the chair.

We don't have a red cat, we have a white cat, and being white it's very prone to sunburn, as a result of which we give it great lashings of sunblocker, which it immediately washes off and gets sunburnt. Last year's sunburn left a little scar on her ear which, while washing a few months ago, she pulled off. The new scar was bigger, sturdier, crustier, and a few weeks later she'd pulled that one off as well resulting in a mega-wongah of a scar which we actually decided we would have to show the vet this week.

The cat beat us to the punch. She was not only covered in blood, but it was also pumping out of her ear. I panicked. I 'phoned the vet and booked an emergency appointment right now and when I got off the telephone the cat had vanished.

I eventually located her under mum's bed and pulled her out and tried to mop up the ear, but she wasn't having any of that. Sun blocker was bad enough, if I thought she was going to let me attack her ear with a paper handkerchief I was very much mistaken, and as for sticking a plaster on it... I was lucky to get away with my life.

We put her into the kitty transporter and loaded it into the car. She was terrified. By the time we got her to the vet the cat basket was a mess, and we're not just talking blood here. The vet looked at the ear a little nonplussed, it seemed that the only thing he could suggest was to stitch it up and hope that she didn't shred it again, or he could cut off the offending bit. He recommended option 2, and since that's the way our minds were going anyway we agreed and he took her in.

We got back in the car and drove home where I discovered that Oxy-Kleen (Or whatever it's called) really does clean up blood, which was just as well since it was all over the place. In the kitchen there were two patches that were really thick and congealed, and initially, being aware that hot water can cook the blood into the fabric, I had poured cold water over it. What a great idea that was. With hindsight I should have poured more water over it, there was enough blood there to have dyed the entire kitchen carpet red...

The following day we went to pick her up, she was looking understandably fairly sorry for herself but the vet had cleaned her up somewhat, and that's what the picture you were looking at up there is of. The cleaned up version.

Now imagine how bad she looked before she was cleaned up...