Mr Cheeky's Car Crash

It has been a most distressing day. Our beloved cat, Mr Cheeky, did not return after his nocturnal rounds and I spent much of the morning scouring the neighbourhood for him. 

I was very relieved when he turned up at lunchtime, albeit looking rather oily, and he immediately ran under the bed in the spare room to sleep off his malfeasance. However, by late afternoon, when Mr Cheeky had refused to eat or drink and seemed dead to the world, it began to dawn on me that he was seriously ill.

He came out from under the bed briefly and I saw, for the first time, that he had lost a small strip of fur on one side of his body. I realised he was not just tired from a night on the tiles but in enormous pain. I called our vet's who suggested I get him in to see them as soon as possible. But when I appeared with the cat basket, Mr Cheeky hid under the bed again and I simply could not get him out.

I produced his favourite foods, then capnip, begged hm to emerge and, reluctantly, tried to move him with a broom handle. All to absolutely no avail.

Gradually, by teatime, I started to believe Mr Cheeky was dying. He had not eaten or drank anything all day and would hardly make a sound. You could watch him and not realise he was breathing. I started to panic. He looked like a goner.

I desperately tried to find a vet who would come out to me but no one seemed available. Luckily, my girlfriend came to the rescue. We ripped the bed apart and eventually managed to get a hissing and biting Mr Cheeky into his cat basket and off to the vet's by 7pm.

We were in the nick of time. The vet shaved off the fur from his stomach to reveal some fairly substantial wounds, and said he has been in a road traffic accident - probably run over by a car. I felt terribly guilty that I had not realised this earlier and got him into the vet's during the afternoon. 

The vet gave him various injections: painkillers and antibiotics, and booked him into the animal hospital, New Priory Vets. Like the first vet's, they were incredibly good, giving Mr Cheeky a really thorough examination and doing everything possible to see him through his trauma.

It looked like Mr Cheeky had passed under a speeding car, flipped over and battered in oil, but, miraculously, with no bones broken.

By now, I think Mr Cheeky realised that he needed these people and had really started to cooperate.

I received a call from Helen the vet at just after 11pm to say that Mr Cheeky had started eating and drinking again and was even generating a little purr. I was in tears of joy.

Mr Cheeky will probably be in hospital for 24 hours and then come home. I don't know what to do about letting him out in future. We don't live very near a busy road and he was so insistent on going out and, apparently, so cautious, at first at least.

He has lost one of his nine lives. Maybe more.