Going to the....

Vet? I know, many of you were thinking my next post was going to be about us "Going to the Lodge".  Well, things don't always go as planned now do they?!  Tuesday afternoon, the kids and I went over to our friends house.  The kids had already had showers and were in their jammies with no shoes.  I looked like a bum, myself.  Leslie and I were chatting while the kids ran wild played nicely.  I missed a call from an unknown number then I saw my neighbor called.  I looked at Leslie and said, "I better listen to the message!  She may be calling to tell me she found my cat."  (Note: I was totally kidding when I said this.  I really thought Bailey was gone for good.)
Lo and behold, our sweet neighbors REALLY had found Bailey!  Bailey had been missing for 50 days.  Yes 50.  He is a totally indoor cat with no front claws.  He turned 11 years years old in March, right around the time he went missing.  We looked for days.  We passed out about 400 flyers.  Searched the woods, the walking trails, the entire neighborhood.  We had just given in to the fact that we would probably never see him again.  We are still in shock that he is alive.
Now, if you're not an animal person, that's ok.  I still love you ;).  But 'round these parts, we ARE animal people.  They are our family and we take care of them!  Bailey needed a lot of medical care.  He spent 2 nights at the vet, has been put under anesthesia twice and will be again on Monday to have his wounds stitched up.  We brought him home for the weekend to give him some extra TLC while administering our own bit of medical care to him here.  He has to have antiseptic of some sort applied to his (open) wounds as well as ointment rubbed on (in) them once a day.  All of which we will do because we love our sweet meow meow and want him to get better!
There is NO telling what this cat has been through over the past 50 days!  I sure wish he could talk to tell us!  He is in pretty good condition considering he had no way to defend himself and no way to get food.  He has some pretty bad wounds on his belly and had (has) maggots due to that BUT his Dr.'s think he's going to be fine.  I am sure he will be a different kitty after all this but we are glad to have him home!
All of that said, we decided to postpone our annual Great Wolf trip.  We planned to leave Wed morning and not knowing what was going to happen with Bailey, I was having a really hard time with the decision.  My sweet boys made it easy for me.  They had a little brotherly talk and decided it was best for us to stay home and make sure Bailey was ok and reschedule our trip.  Gotta love my boys!

Here's Bailey when we first got to the vet on Tuesday.

This is that evening.  Glad to be home!

Yesterday when we got to bring him home.  Poor thing has to wear the cone of shame so he won't lick his belly.

He has to stay confined....so we went and bought some sticky plastic stuff to put on the carpet (to keep the carpet out of the wounds) and made a little barricade in our bedroom.  I sure wouldn't want to be stuck in a bathroom all weekend!