This better work, because while my boy was really happy to see me when I picked him up this afternoon, he’s not a happy camper. That big square thing on his leg is the external fixature — pins sunk into his bones, and connected to rods to immobilize the whole lower leg joint. Here’s a close up. He also came home with a bottle of “analgesic elixir” — narcotics — and thank goodness. I got him home, and set up in his little bed (which normally lives under the kitchen table, but the cone kept getting hung up so I pulled him out into the room), and he started to make this very sad panting/crying kind of noise. So he got a prompt 2ccs of elixir (I’m thinking of him as my own little Lily Bart — with a better ending, of course) and they must have given him some of this at the vet, because he was very happy to lap it right up. He’d been pretty restless and uncomfortable, so I did what any loving pet owner would do — I drugged him. And now he’s sleeping in his little bed. I took the cone off for now — while I’ve got an eye on him and can keep him from chewing at his bandages, he doesn’t need it, but if I have to leave the house, it’s going back on.

At the end of the day, I was very happy to see my boy sitting up and grinning at me in the back of my car, silly cone and all. I just hope this works, because if we’ve put him through all this for nothing, I’m going to feel very very guilty.