A quick update. Piccolo still has occasional, visible abdominal spasms, and his former formidable appetite is gone…but he clearly is ecstatic to be home and well on the way to a full recovery. How do I know this for sure? Well, this morning I found one of Piccolo’s toy balls on our bed (he must have dumped it there during the night)… 🙂

To our utter surprise, he has turned out to be THE purrfect patient. He licks his medicine right off the tip of my finger. No kidding. No running away and hiding under beds or behind boxes in the attic. No need for us to search the house inch by inch to find his hiding place. No need to stalk, grab and hold him down (=all of this is more or less what we have to do with Puzzola, our eldest kitty). None of that. Piccolo is making my nursing duties so MUCH easier …

And now for an amusing story (I think so, anyway). On Monday afternoon, as I was waiting for Piccolo to have his ultrasound, I heard a cat screaming bloody murder in one of the examination rooms. Oh, you have no idea…and this terrific meowing/screaming ruckus went on and on and on. I finally asked the secretary what was happening to that cat. Her answer: “Oh, he is having an ultrasound.”

An ultrasound…er, I see…

I retreated to my seat. Images of me sneaking Piccolo out of the clinic began flashing through my mind. But my sensible side took over, “forget it, Piccolo will be fine, this won’t hurt him a bit”… And, in fact, Piccolo was extremely brave. He didn’t even meow, let alone scream. He tried to get up a couple of times, but that was it. 

As “luck” had it, Mr. Scream-My-Head-Off, a gorgeous five-year-old kitty named Ciccio, occupied the cage next to Piccolo’s. A sign that read “MORDE” (= “HE BITES” in Italian) hung ominously on his cage door. I felt really sorry for Ciccio, who had one of those horrible Elizabethan collars circling his little neck. He looked totally miserable and growled almost constantly, which was very unsettling for Piccolo, as you can imagine. Early in our acquaintance, I tried cooing reassuringly to Ciccio, but that only seemed to make him angrier. I can hardly blame him. I would probably growl, too, if I were stuck inside a cage with a plastic torture device around my neck, AND a complete stranger making weird noises were looking in at me…

Anyway, on Tuesday morning I met Ciccio’s “owner,” a very nice, classy Florentine lady. We fell into conversation almost immediately, since we were the only visitors there. She told me that, like Piccolo, Ciccio also had acute pancreatitis.

“Ciccio is the sweetest, most darling little thing,” she beamed, snatching her hand away just as Ciccio reached out to scratch her. (No, I swear, I am not making this up…) “Yes, he is a really gorgeous cat,” I commented cautiously…

Anyway, I am happy to report that Ciccio had a loving (and rather oblivious) human family that visited him as much as we visited our Piccolo.

This morning I had to go back to the clinic to pick up Piccolo’s papers. I asked about Ciccio. The visibly relieved secretary informed me that he had gone home, too. She added that sweet darling little Ciccio had scratched the classy lady’s arms to smithereens right before they left the clinic…