I never cease to be amazed by the resident tripod's ingenuity in obtaining attention and cuddles. She's a back leg short of a picnic - so lacks the requisite "spring" to jump up onto high objects. She apparently has been spending the last few days plotting how to steal attention from that human TV box in the corner of the room that takes the limelight away from her - and I just saw her go up her cat tree (in a very undignified manner), across along a bookshelf, over the TV to plonk herself in front of it, giving us the Suki director's cut version of TV with a cat head and pointy ears blocking half the screen (I swear I haven't watched a DVD in bed without pointy ears blocking half the picture in the best part of 7 years).
For anyone worrying how cats cope after amputation - she's a prime example of how they compensate. As her backstory - she's been a tripod ever since I've owned her - when I finally properly left home the first thing I did after unpacking was to get on the phone to Cat's Protection - said I wanted an older indoor cat as I lived on a main road and was out at work for a few hours at a time (and we know kittens are just toe-hating psychopaths in cute furry suits that you really need to be at home to train out of the more lunatic behaviour), and she said I'd answered all the questions so thoroughly she didn't see the need for a homecheck - asked if I had anything in mind and I believe my phrase was "I'm a sucker for a hard luck story", which is apparently the phrase guaranteed to reduce cat rescue people into a squealing ball of glee. Within 10 minutes I was off in the car to a cat foster mum, and met up with the most pathetic lump of furryness going - still missing fur patches on both sides from being amputated and spayed - who turned on what can be described as the most over the top charm offensive/Oscar winning crippled kitty performance going... 20 minutes later I was off to the pet shop to buy all the relevant kitty bits and the tripod (only called that when she's not listening) came home with me that evening.
She's, well, let's not mince words - completely nuts and a total cuddle junkie. She was described to me as a black and white, three legged purring machine - and that's about the gist of it. From what I gather from the rescue people - she was a farm hanger-on-kitty (not officially owned by them but mooched about there nonetheless) and they spotted her limping one day. When they rang CP who came out and caught her - the leg was too badly damaged to be saved (suspected dog involvement), so off it came and up she went for rehoming - and I must have rung up at just the right time really since they were anticipating having her fostered out for the long haul. She's a complete attention seeker (to the level it does get quite wearing sometimes but I love her to bits so let her get away with it), lays the limp on with abundance when gullible visitors who might give her MORE cuddles come to stay (my mother in law mainly), has an obssessional (and mutual) hatred of my mother and spends the evening in bed with us, lying between us, with her head on the pillow and body hanging down between ours... yes, basically she thinks she's human and completely rules the roost.
Only problems we've had with her three leggedness are that, while we've got a covered litter tray, we removed the swinging cat flap and made sure we got one with the lowest front we could to make it easier for her to get in there, and she's an indoor only cat because she wouldn't stand a chance if a dog came after her since she's unable to up-jump properly to climb. She's now an elderly lady really (we think she's about 7-8, my mum melodramatically delights in telling me how her time's running out - but the vet gave her a clean bill of health recently - apart from a snapped tooth from her past life - and she purred at him adoringly the whole time - even when he shoved a thermometer up where the sun doesn't shine).
When she can't get up somewhere she wants to jump up to you usually find that all of a sudden she'll figure out a route to get there (like with the TV), she managed to get on the kitchen bench via a picnic basket, the laundry basket and the bin once, and if you leave a dining chair out a milimetre too far, she'll be up via that onto the dining table so she can sleep on top of the radiator... all-in-all, despite my mother's comments about "that stupid cat", she's a very very intelligent (and manipulative in the nicest possible way) kitty.
Always amuses me with the reactions of the kids I teach to hearing the cat's got three legs - you get a mix of kids thinking I'm an axe-weilding leg-chopping maniac in my spare time, to ones who just tell me I'm wrong because cats have four legs.
