Oliver doing Great!

I know it's been almost 4 weeks since my last diary entry for Oliver and since then he's been recovering wonderfully! He's been making improvements everyday. I would say he runs pretty darn fast for only 3 legs! He now races up the stairs without trying to use his imaginary leg. The first few times he did that I had to hold back the gasps because it sounded like it hurt. We have a lot of hard wood floors and the stairs are hardwood too. It's an old house too, so there's 17 steps up instead of the standard 13. It would be nice to carpet them but they are too narrow and I've already fallen 3 times down them in past years:(
After awhile Mia, Ollie's best friend in the house, stopped hissing at him. He smelled like the vet's plus the whole bedroom and bathroom area that I kept him sequestered in really took on the smell too. Now, in the mornings we wake up to them wrestling around. It's so sweet how they play together.
Oh, big news this last weekend! Ollie jumped in the clawfoot tub again! (I'll post those photo's.) Unfortunately Mia didn't join him like she normally does. It's great to see him getting back to doing some of the normal things he used to do.
The one sad thing that he still tries to do is scratch with his now imaginary leg to his itchy ear or chin:( I guess I should show him that his front paw could do that for him. Hopefully he'll figure this out on his own.

So far so good?

Last Saturday (3-8-08) I made the mistake thinking it was ok to leave Oliver out for the day while away on a day trip. After all, he showed up last fall and seemed smart enough to be outdoors. Plus I wasn't sure he's ever used the litter boxes in the house, so he always went out first thing every morning.
He had become a part of our family after searching but not finding his people. I figured he had to be someone's kitty since he had been neutered and all.
When we returned last Saturday, he did not greet us like he normally does. Hours went by and still no Oliver. Finally, I got a call from my neighbor who lives behind me and said that she saw a cat come over the fence (late afternoon) and was crying out and then saw he was limping. She wasn't sure it was him at first. Then the teenager next door and his friends had found him, put him in a laundry basket and went out to search for his owners. Just as I was going out the door to go over to my neighbors to search her area they showed up with him. At first I wasn't sure what happened to him, maybe a cat fight. His poor back right leg was all scraped up around the ankle area and later we discovered a bare patch on his side where the fur had come off. We got him into emergency and luckily my own vet was on call.
After we dropped him off for her to check him out, which required x-rays and cleaning of the wound area, she later called with the news that the trauma was more than likely caused by being hit by a car. She thought she might be able to set the bones back into place, but they weren't holding. Then another x-ray showed that one of the bones had been chipped. We could have tried to have specialists fix this but there was no guarantee that it would work and my husband didn't want to spend over $2,000 on a maybe only to have it amputated later.
So, yesterday his leg was amputated.
Then, another set back occurred. Just when I thought things were as bad as they could get, they got worse. They discovered his breathing wasn't quite right during recovery and they took anther x-ray and discovered that he had a diaphragmatic hernia. We made the choice to have a second surgery this morning to repair that and so far so good.
We may be able to pick him up tomorrow if all goes well. I'm still so scared for my little guy.