Thank you - *they* certainly think so!  ;>  I *LOVE* Maine Coons - both
Bandit and Sammy have more than a bit in their ancestry, I believe.  But all
my babies are rescues.

Hugs,

CatNipped

It was a long horror story starting with when she went in for a routine
teeth cleaning on Feb. 25th.

The problem is that Bandit is a *BAD* cat.  She screams like a mountain lion
and backs it up by biting or scratching down to the bone.  At another vet's
office, quite a few years ago, it was "policy" that the owner not hold the
pet for insurance reasons.  I tried to tell them that it was a mistake and
to let me hold her, that I would not hold them liable if she injured me, but
it was no go.  The vet tech put on leather gloves and tried to hold her
down.  She managed to flip around in his hands and, with her back claws,
laid his arm open down to the bone from elbow to wrist.  He must have needed
more than 50 stitches.  Blood was everywhere - I was horrified.  Later, I
demonstrated to the vet my technique of flipping her over, burying my face
in her belly and, shaking my face back and forth, murmuring "bugga, bugga,
bugga".  The vet didn't argue with me any more about holding her myself.

Anyway, with this history, the vet techs at my new vet were too afraid of
her to check on her and turn her like they should have while she was in
recovery from the anesthetic after the teeth cleaning.  They had wrapped her
in towel and set her on a fluid-filled heating pad.  She must have moved the
towel and was laying, sedated, directly on the heating pad.  When she got
home that day I didn't see anything wrong.  For the next couple of days she
was grouchy and hissy-spitty, but that's normal for Bandit.  I'd been
working 12 hour days and I just figured she was having a touch of arthritis,
so I left her alone.  Last Monday I picked her up and noticed a wet feeling
on her belly and an awful smell.  Since she is a long-haired cat I thought
she had squatted too low in the litter box and had gotten wet litter stuck
to her belly.

I got out the brush and turned her over to clean her belly and I got the
shock of my life.  She had an area, 2 1/2 inches wide and 4 inches long that
had lost all hair and was oozing fluids.  She had been burned and the burn
had turned gangrenous.  I felt awful!!!!  I can't imagine how she hid this
from me for 10 days!  I felt like the biggest sh*t on the planet and
wallowed in guilt while I started throwing on clothes and screaming for my
husband to get downstairs.

We rushed her to the emergency vet that night and then brought her to her
regular vet the next day.  The vet, who admitted it was their fault even
before we could, reimbursed us for the emergency vet bill.  The next morning
(last Wednesday), she performed surgery to cut out all the necrotic tissue
(we were lucky that it didn't extend to the subcutaneous layer of skin which
still had good vascular flow).  Anyway, she's on the mend now, the vet techs
got chewed out supremely, the vet couldn't have been more apologetic for
what Bandit had to go through, and hopefully all will be well in the end.

Hugs,

CatNipped

On a few of them I had to use Photoshop to get out "red eye", so they may
look funny, but most of them show her natural color.

ROTFLMAO!  No, not hardly - not even with my husband, only with me.  We
always warn guests not to go near her.  Once we had this guy over who owned
two big pit bulls and we told him to stay away from her.  He laughed and
when my husband and I went into the kitchen to get some drinks for everyone
he walked by her and moved his foot at her like he was going to poke her.
She let out her trademark cougar scream and took off after him.  My husband
and I heard her screaming and him screaming and rushed back into the room to
see him standing on the back rest of our sofa hugging the wall and screaming
like a little girl to "Get her away from me, get her away from me!"  ;>

Hugs,

CatNipped