It's 10:30 a.m. in the morning...do you know where your cat is?

Picture this...Monday morning, 10:30 a.m. sitting in your cube at work. Your co-worker answers the phone, tells the caller you are on your break, pauses, then tells you, "There is an emergency at your house, your neighbor is on the phone!"

Your heart races, your creative mind flashes with visions of natural disasters, fire, robbery...you answer the phone not knowing what to expect and your neighbor tells you that two dogs went into your back yard and attacked your cat. They are not able to get to your cat who is growling and hiding under your above ground oil tank. You are at work without a car, a 45 minute bus ride from home.

Welcome to my Monday morning.

When I got home I found my 15 year old cat Max hiding in the back corner of my front porch shaking terribly and in a complete state of shock. He didn't seem to have any open wounds (no blood) but I took him to the vet to be checked anyhow. They held him in the hospital for the day and gave him IV fluids, sending him home that night thinking all was well.

Welcome to my Tuesday morning...wake to Max straining to urinate and only passing blood...back to the vet where the vet thinks he may have an infection. He stays the day at the vet getting fluids and a steroid injection to hopefully reduce what appears to be swelling in his brain creating vision problems and concussion symptoms. Three or so in the afternoon the vet calls me and says he doesn't have an infection. Now she suspects that his bladder has been ruptured.

During my commute to the vet I sit with sunglasses on trying to hide my tears...the vet calls my cell phone and tells me that she x-rayed his abdomen and his bladder is in tact...apparently just very bruised. She also found several puncture marks on his back leg that she fears will get infected. She sends him home with antibiotics.

Welcome Wednesday morning...I awake to an alert Max acting much more like himself. His eyes are no longer completely dilated and he eats breakfast, pees in the litter box so I go to work optimistic he will be okay.

Fast forward to ten o'clock Wednesday night and Max, who has withdrawn since the morning and not really interacting with me, simultaneously vomits and urinates on the pillow where he is laying. I call the vet and he says that he suspects it is a pain reaction since he was better and then got worse again. The steroid injection had worn off and now he is sick from the pain. The vet says that the worse is probably yet to come as "tussles" with dogs often creates severe pain.

I go to the vet and get pain medication only to return home and force the tablets down Max's throat with a chaser of liquid antibiotic. He froths at the mouth from the bad taste and scrambles to get away from me.

Now I am sitting crossed legged on the floor typing because I'm afraid if I get on the bed he'll hide under the bed in order to avoid me.

So yeah, that's the details up to the minute. THANKFULLY my neighbors were home when it happened. They ran into the yard and chased the dogs away (who were soon caught by animal services). Without their interruption it seems evident that the dogs would have killed Max.

I worked at vet clinics years ago and know the dangers cats that go outside face (and my two younger cats are not allowed out) but Max had spent his life in and out before I really knew better and my justification was that he never left the yard, mostly just watched the world go by from the back deck.

I never suspected that dogs would run into my yard and attack him...making sure that he was in bed with me by ten p.m. at night wasn't sufficient.