​Sylvie originally came in on Dec. 21st as a stray cat with an injured leg, after taking some x-rays, Dr. Logue confirmed that her left hind leg was badly broken. Unfortunately, the Good Samaritan who brought her in was not able to provide the required care & activity restrictions needed to allow her leg to heal. One of our wonderful technicians offered to cover the costs and Dr. Jeff offered to keep Sylvie here at the office on strict cage rest to see how she would respond before amputating her leg. After just a few days, Sylvie was acting better and starting to use her leg! We decided to give her some time to heal and re-evaluate in several weeks.

A​fter 5 weeks of strict cage rest Sylvie was doing very well and on January 26th was taken to surgery to be spayed and check the healing of her leg. The moment of truth was here! We all had grown attached to Sylvie over the past weeks and were anxious to see what the x-ray would show. GOOD NEWS! Sylvie's bones were healing on their own and she would be able to keep her leg! She still needed to be kept quiet, but we could let her out of her confinement to get some exercise and during those times she proved to be the perfect clinic cat! Nothing seemed to upset her and she was always ready for someone to pick her up and snuggle with her. She would calmly observe all the activity taking place in our lab and treatment areas and then find a place in our break room to curl up and nap.

In November 2021, almost a full year after Sylvie arrived at TLC, we took her back to X-ray to check her leg. We were all amazed at how well her bone had fused together to heal! Over the past year she rarely showed any outward symptoms that her leg was "not right". During the first several months of healing she wasn't able to jump up onto our counters, but that did not stop her from getting where she wanted to be! She loved when UPS or FedEx dropped off boxes and she figured out how to use the back of the couch to sit and watch out the window in Dr. Jeff's office. As her healing progressed she became able to jump up on the counters and had trained our front office staff that 3:30 in the afternoon was snack time! She was able to graduate from a clinic kennel in our treatment area to a very nice multi-level cat condo in our break room! Sylvie has completely embraced her role as our Clinic Cat and we couldn't be happier with the arrangement.

Sylvie continues to do extremely well with her leg and although her x-rays show obvious malformations in her bone, she shows no pain or physical restrictions in using her leg normally. She has not needed any pain medication since the first week she was hospitalized, but we know she will eventually develop arthritis in that leg as she gets older. To help postpone the need for pain medication, Sylvie receives monthly Adequan & Solensia injections to keep her bones and joints healthy and is on a strict weight management plan to keep any excess weight off her leg.