My tripods

Mr. Toes is our three-legged double pawed kitty.  He was a rescue cat that we took in sometime last October.   We didn’t know his name at first and so we called him Jack (as in rabbit, cus his feet are so big).  When we took him to Greg Goodson our vet, he instantly knew him as Mr. Toes and told me the story of his amputation.   Because I had just adopted one three-legged cat, Greg and the Animal control officer asked me if I would take a second tripod cat, Blue who was also a rescue kitty.  We did and Blue and Toes, who had come from the same situation, were reunited and continued to hate each other here.   A male cat thing I think.

We lost blue in early October to a fisher cat.  My buddy Laura has seen it at her house, just up the road and fishers love to eat cats.  I don’t blame them, I simply don’t like them and that is the chance you take when you live in rural areas and you let your cats go outside. I think keeping cats inside all the time is worse than letting the cat take a chance on becoming pray instead of the normal mouse catching predator . In any case, Blue is gone and Jigger our fatty pants lab died all in the same week, so I went for some animal therapy at the local animal shelter.  I brought my pal Lili with me for support and also so that I wouldn’t come home with another animal.  That didn’t work so well.  When we got to the shelter, Vaunn came to the door and said “we have a three-legged dog that just came in and is up for adoption, and you are pre-approved.  So that is how Jewel came to be with us.

Jewel is actually a three footed dog.  She is missing the bottom half of her leg, leaving her with a narrow peg leg hind stub.

I don’t know why I have a softness for tripods. But I do and they make terrific pets.  For the most part, they are like any other loving pet.  Loyal, funny, occasionally demanding, gotta feed them, put them out, let them in, change the water, fill the water bowl, change the litter box, take them to the vet, take pictures of them and love, love, love them.  There are a few things that need a bit of attention.

A front leg amputee on a cat means that jumping down from anything is not too graceful.  The cat tends to land of its face, so you got to have some steps for it to use going down.

A back leg amputee on a cat means that jumping up is limited.  So you need steps for the cat to use going up.

A amputee at the shoulder means no stump pain.  A mid-leg amputee with a stump can be sensitive to being scraped or to cold.

Also, amputee dogs and cats still wiggle the stump and sometimes can’t clean or scratch an ear if they are missing a hind leg.   You gotta take care of the ears for them.

I found a site that sells life jackets for tripod dogs: Tripawds.com Also has resources for folks just getting into it, for a variety of reasons.  Here is a good site for disabled cats.

My guess is that there are more tripods out there in shelters that need good homes.   If you are up to having a really loving and pretty neat pet, you might want to adopt one for yourself.