On Course

Percival is settling in at the Cosy Apartment. He no longer needs his collar, though in that there hangs a tale. I wanted to subject the library to my bi-weekly cleaning of all the rooms, so I stored Perce in the bathroom for an hour. When I came to put him back in the library, I found some smears of blood. My first thought was of his neuter-wound. Sure enough, that was bleeding a little.

However, after some experimentation, I deduced that the renewed bleeding was not due to his licking the site. I remained with him until the blood there was tacky, then deliberately left him without a collar. I had not seen him trying to attend to his wound since he first came home from surgery, so I suspected that he was not doing so now. Checking on him an hour later, I saw that he had not bothered with the wound; indeed, he has not since.

The smears I had found were on the bathroom counter. He probably pulled the incision open superficially when jumping up there. This is one of the reasons why we are ordered by veterinaries to keep a newly fixed cat inactive. That, of course, is impossible unless one ties him down or puts him in a crate for a week, neither option being at all either practical or desirable. Even with a cone, a cat will at least try to leap and run. All we can do is watch that he doesn’t damage the wound in some way.

Percival was put in the library without a collar and, as I thought, left the spot alone. The bleeding had ceased quickly and all now looks to be healing well.

Soon, I will be releasing him to explore the apartment, though I will confine the others while he does so. His smell indicates that his tomcat hormones have not yet dissipated, though I don’t think he would cause much trouble on purpose. He was quite pacific when associating with the ferals in the colony he had periodically joined, though this does not mean that Renn, Neville and Imogen - especially the latter - would appreciate a semi-tom among them. So meeting the others will have to wait.

But that doesn’t rule out Percival coming know his new home better in the meantime.