My cat is a nazi

Poor Ellie Roosevelt.

For several months, she's been straining to pee. Then, one evening while I'm taking a bath, I watch her jump onto the bathroom sink, climb into the porcelin divot, and use it as a bidet.

I took her to the vet, and he thought perhaps she had a urinary tract infection. Two weeks of twice a day antibiotics ("bubblegum flavored" - sure to win her over) and minimal blood loss on my part, she wasn't any better.

Back to the vet. The morning of the appointment, I can't find the cat carrier. Crap. I'm running late. On my way to the car, I call mom and ask if I can use their cat carrier. Sure, no problem. I start to back out of the driveway, and realize I forgot the cat.

I go back into the house, grab Ellie, and chuck her into the front seat of the car.

Not my smartest move.
Her feet never touched the seat, but rather stuck out every claw she still has and dug them into my dashboard. She hung suspended between the dashboard and the lip of the passenger side window. Good thing my parents, and the cat carrier, were only a block away.

I stick the cat in the carrier and prepare to back out of the driveway, when I notice something small rolling toward me, like a bug or something.
I wish it had been a bug.

Miss Ellie, in her stress and fear of levitating over the dashboard, peed. And the pee was rolling in-between ornamental crevices which were making me swear at Ford's interior designers.

At the vet's, she has an xray, and a not-good diagnosis. Bladder stones. Approximately 20 small, rock-hard spindly things that aren't unlike droplets of starfish.

She had a couple of surgeries and a week in the "cat hospital", and facing another surgery, before I could bring her home.

I let her out of the cat bag (newly acquired from Walmart), and she stepped carefully into the livingroom. Her body was shrunken from the stress of the hospital and from not eating well. Her long legs stepped gingerly to the sofa where she started to rub the antiseptic smell off of her.

It was then that I noticed her legs. At about where a human's elbow would be, she had two bright white bands shaved into her lush, black fur. She walked stiffly, each movement obviously causing discomfort. If cats can grimace, she was doing it.

The stiff legs, the bands, the grimace...I had a sudden urge to watch a World War II movie where good prevails over evil, and kitties prevail over bladder stones.