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Lucy Liu Against All Odds

The Dichotomy

Too often in a situation, its "damned if you do, damned if you don't" difficult to weigh the pros and cons and figure out which action is best to take. Right now I've reached such a situation in Lucy's physical therapy. On the one hand, Lucy's physical therapy has been tremendously beneficial to her. On the other hand, Lucy tends to avoid me or even run and hide from me when she thinks I'm going to catch her to do her physical therapy.

I've described this physical therapy to try to straighten Lucy's toes on her right rear and return more flexibility to her foot. A closeup of her right rear leg on her profile clearly shows the problem with her right rear toes and the joint immediately behind them. When I do this physical therapy, Lucy doesn't show pain. When I do Lucy's physical therapy, between the times I'm working on her foot I also give her praise, scratch her in ways I know she likes, and give her Pounce treats (she loves Pounce treats!) all in an effort to make her physical therapy a positive experience for her. On Mothers Day when Russ was here, he distracted Lucy by moving a laser light around close to her while I did her therapy and she let me apply the downward pressure on the joint immediately above and behind her right rear toes and stretch her toes and work with her foot for several minutes without any protest whatsoever.

However, for the past few days Lucy has been doing her best to stay out of my reach totally. If she was laying on the bed and I moved to get up, she'd immediately bolt out of the room and flee to her cave under the couch. Perhaps she sensed I didn't feel well enough to pursue her. Cats are keenly sensitive to such things. She was right too, she did get to skip her physical therapy for a couple of days because I felt so rotten.

Finally tonight, Lucy again started coming up to me to have her neck scratched and to get petted again. She's back to her usual normal affectionate sociable self but the instant I moved a hand in the direction of her right rear leg, in a flash she bolted for her cave.

I don't want Lucy running and hiding from me, I want her (as I want all my cats) to see me as the source of positive things. At the same time, I need to do what's best for her in the long run and unquestionably what's best for her is for me to continue her physical therapy at least until I reach a point with her where her toes become flexible enough that at least part of her main paw pad touches the ground when she puts her right rear foot down. Once she reaches that point in flexibility, her own activities will likely bring about continued improvement in her foot.

Cats are tremendously loving forgiving creatures.

Thus the only logical choice for me to make is to continue Lucy's physical therapy until the point is reached where her own activities can continue to encourage further improvement without my help. I'll just have to hope that after Lucy reaches that point, she'll forgive me and show me her sweet lovable contented side again.

After all, Lucy, being Mom sometimes means loving you enough and caring enough to have the courage to do things that while they may not be so pleasant for you at the moment, will definitely benefit you and help you make the most of your life in the long run.

Happy Mothers Day to my Human Mom!

Even though I don't like my physical therapy, my Mom deserves some of those freebie Mothers Day trophies I've seen other Catster cats talk about, for all the work she's done with me because if it wasn't for Mom & the hell of vets and physical therapy etc she puts me through, I wouldn't be where I am today, able to stand and walk.

The vet says I've made more progress than I was ever expected to make. She also says the difference in my overall condition & muscle tone between the day I came here, December 4 2012, and now is amazing.

To show my appreciation for Mom yesterday (Mother's Day), I never ran away from her once all day. I even let her pick me up off the bed and do my physical therapy. Then I came back to have her scratch my right side of my neck. My right leg and foot don't work well enough yet for me to really scratch itches very well with it and Mom always understands and scratches them for me.

But that's what makes Moms special. They do things that seem small to them, but are important to us kitties who love our human Moms!

Thank you Mom for all your tireless patient persistence in helping me overcome life's obstacles to reach the point I STAND at today. I wish I could say I won't protest any more of my physical therapy etc but I know I couldn't live up to that because after all, I'm still a cat!

Humans Are So Sneaky

Humans are sooooo SNEAKY! They do things like talk to and pet another cat nearby you, then suddenly they reach out and grab you before you can react, restrain you, and do physical therapy to you. They do things like block one entrance to the hiding place behind the couch, then come after you from the opposite side. When you turn and try to run out the opposite side, there's this big heavy box in the way and before I can figure out how to maneuver myself over it in time, I'm caught! They cheat by shutting doors and reducing the number of rooms you can run and hide in. Then they try to fool you into running down a hallway toward a room that SURPRISE! has the door shut. By the time you realize you've been had, the human is waiting at the only open end of the hallway. Sometimes you can get lucky and dart past the human fast enough to avoid being caught, but if you do that, then the chase will only start again and inevitably you'll get caught just because the human cheated by closing the doors to the other rooms!

Once Mom has caught me and I know I can't escape, I really don't mind the new physical therapy that much. All Mom has to do is put downward pressure on the joint on top of my foot behind my toes on my right rear foot and at the same time gently reach under my foot and stretch the toes out. In the closeup picture of my right rear foot on my profile, you can see how the joint behind my toes is raised and how the toes curl under and you can visualize what my new physical therapy looks like.

Thing is, now that I can get around fairly well and have the freedom of the whole house, I being a typical cat, don't like to be caught or restrained against my will!