the avedissian's living a mile high: Ziggy's accident

Whew, got all caught up with summer posts, I do have a ton of miscellaneous photos that didn't make the posts, I might just have to have a mishmash of those. But for now, this post is about my cat Ziggy.
This all happened around 4 wks ago. After Paul had gotten home, we decided to take the kids to our local Rec center and have them practice swimming. I think one of the kids let the cat out, not normally a big deal. We were gone maybe an hour when we got home and he was there at our front door waiting for us. Again, not a big deal, he normally does that, especially on hot days. But as we were getting in, there was a rather lengthy phone message from our neighbor explaining that her cat "Cat" ( I know original name) and Ziggy got into a big fight and that her cat was pretty scraped up and for us to check out Zig. I had gone upstairs to change and Paul yelled at me for me to check out Ziggy. I came down to get him and noticed the fur was just flying off, he was limping, and somewhere he was bleeding (as evidence of the blood on my white shirt)
He wasn't in the mood for me to check him out, so he went to the basement to rest. He didn't even come up in the middle of the night to bite my nose like every other night.
I checked on him, he was pretty beat up, and wouldn't walk and still limped. So off to the vets we went.... a complete check up, x-rays, antibiotics and $400 later, he was diagnosed with a ripped back claw on his right side (ergo the blood) and a broken toe. So he came home with a back paw wrapped up, front leg splinted up and a lovely cone of shame.
It took him a while to learn how to get around, he is nearly done with his treatment. We have had to go in every week or so for splint changes. a few sores have arose due to the splinting, but those are healing. I have actually re-splinted him myself, not wanting to go in and have them charge me an arm and a leg for that.
He is so ready to go back to normal...but for now he is Mr Gimpy, but don't let that fool you, he uses that splint like a lethal weapon. And for kicks they change up the colors of his splint, first it was blue, then red, then purple and now he is sporting a neon green.