"It's either the surgery, or you've to put it to sleep."

That's what the vet said.

4 days ago, I was trying to perform the "flying cat" stunt, whereby you throw a cat towards the sofa and watch it spreads its limbs out, something similar to a flying fox. This stunt was shown to me by Kelvin, who demostrated it and we all had a laugh.. Anyway, apparently I did not perform the stunt correctly, and Mao-mi did not have a proper landing. Soon after, we noticed her limping on her left hind leg. We thought it might be a sprain and decided to see what happens after a couple of days.

Today, the leg got worse, she was limping more than ever. Initially she've only got a slight swollen thigh, but today it was massive! The pain had even gone to her paw! Feeling guilty and sorry for her, I decided to bring her to a vet to have a look.

The vet's diagnosis was that she had got into a fight with another cat and got bitten, which lead to an infection with lots of juicy pus inside. The medical term for that is "abscess". Without treatment, Mao-mi's leg will slowly "rot" and it'll lead to her death. "How much is it for the treatment?" I asked, "$480." the vet replied. Our faces changed when we heard that. "But it's either she have the surgery done, or I might have to put it to sleep." said the vet.

We thought about it awhile and bargained with the vet and he agreed to do it for $440. We couldn't bear to let Mao-mi die like that. She has become part of our lives already. Oh, and we found out that "she" is actually a "he", and was sterilized and is a mix breed of Burmese and short haired domestic, and is roughly 3 years old.

The surgery was a success and the vet said that this was the worse case of absess he've ever seen, and there was ALOT of juicy pus inside! If treatment wasn't given to Mao-mi, 95% that 'he' would've died from it. The vet had to keep her overnight just to make sure all the pus gets drained out. I'm picking her up later in the morning, hope that he'll be fine. (Really not used to Mao-mi being a male...)

We saved a life today, and we're happy about it.



How can anyone bear to let a creature this cute, be put to sleep?

(By the way, for all those that doesn't know who Mao-mi is, we think she's either a run-away or a stray cat..)