The timing of the cat's return became the seed of our first household legend in Germany.
The legend went: the cat came back to support our broken-wristed patient.
Admittedly, this sounds weird without the back story. A year earlier, the cat had its own episode of broken wrist, or rather, shattered paws.
She had lived as a yeard cat outside for years without incident. Then she vanished for a week and showed up the next Saturday sitting on her hind legs like a meercat or a prairie dog, bawling with every move.
X rays showed both front paws shattered, a jumble of bones like a Japanese stick game.
We had put her on worker's comp for the hundreds of mice she and her brother had killed and eaten.
When the doctors had put her paws back into a form that came as close to healthy paws as possible, she spent two months in a cage barely larger than herself, a sleeping pad on one side, a litter box filling the other half of the cage.
She handled the recuperation with incredible grace and good humor. From the moment we took her inside, this formerly ferral cat put her trust in us humans. And now she had just survived more than two weeks on her own, without losing hardly any weight.
This is the back story to the household legend. It is understood that you may still find the household legend slightly weird, but hopefully also harmless.
The human patient did well, with the cat hanging out on the bed most of the time.
The strong opiate pain medication was running out, and the local physician who was providing the follow-up care after discharge from the hospital called us in for an appointment. In order for you to savor the following conversation, remember, we are in a small town in Germany at a local German doctor, a country doctor in many ways, whose main vice is well known to all patients -- he sneaks out every couple of hours into a secluded back area for a cigarette.
Doc: I am happy to be able to tell you that you do not need surgery. You should regain full control of your wrist without further intervention.
Patient: That's wonderful.
Doc: Your medication will run out in a few days, do you need more?
Patient: Not sure, the pain has lessened quite a bit, and I don't like the way the opiate makes me feel.
Doc: Well, yes, I really wish I could prescibe (he pauses briefly) California-style pain medication. It is the best medication against that kind of pain, beats these opiates any day, what a shame we don't have that.
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