cat warranty?

[dragonlady7]

How nice, she just stepped on my keyboard and made it so I couldn't type into text-entry fields in Firefox. No idea how she did that. Closing all my windows fixed it...
But anyway.
It's what she did while stepping on the keyboard, rather than whatever keystroke sequence she hit, that worries me.
She got three paws onto the keyboard and then paused as she was lifting her right hind leg from the ground, mewed in distress, and withdrew backwards.
She's done that a few times over the last week. Z said he came in once (before I got home) and she was sitting on the floor crying, and when she tried to walk she limped on her right hind leg. He caught her and consoled her, and then she got up and walked away and was fine for three or four days.
This morning she was walking across the living room floor and suddenly stopped, cried, and was limping on her back leg again. She lay down where she was, crying, and I immediately got down beside her and investigated. She let me touch her leg. I flexed the toes, the first "ankle"-like joint, the joint that on a horse would be the hock (backwards knee thing); I flexed the hip part. No distress, no reaction, all moved as they should. No blood, no feeling of a scab under the fur, nothing. She batted at me with her paws at one point, but I couldn't tell if she were playing; she made no sound and didn't use her claws on me. When I was done prodding her she got up and walked away and was just fine.

So that's three times now, over the course of a week, that our otherwise healthy, just-over-a-year-old cat has displayed signs of distress related to her right hind leg. Other than that she is normally active, chasing birds (and catching one the other day, grr), jumping up and down from things, tearing around the house, being her normal self.
She is licking her right hind foot rather intently at the moment, but showing no real signs of distress; she was licking the rest of herself too. (She's moved on to her tail now.) She lets me touch her, lets me poke her, lets me do whatever I like and is not fussy about that back foot.

What the heck can it be?

I'm seeing a lot of expensive vet bills punctuated by a shrug and a "keep an eye on her" in my future. Grrrmmmble. Well, as long as it's not, like, kitty toe cancer or something. :(

Comments

[kkatowll.livejournal.com]

weirddddd.

[greenworldgirl.livejournal.com]

It could be a tendon inside the leg that is cramping, not anything external on the foot. Or it could be a tiny little bit of something between the paw pads, like a little splinter that pokes her occasionally. Other then that? Dunno.

[heebiejeebie.livejournal.com]

animals are really good at hiding injuries, so she might be hiding it most of the time.

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

Did you check her foot over carefully? There could be something in/between the pads of her foot that's digging into her when she steps on it just right. Just a thought from the way you've described it.

We got a cat.. and cat warranties

[(Anonymous)]

We just got a cat. She was the deluxe version, she came with one extra toe on each front paw. We have been dubbed her Thumbalina (or "Thumbs" for short). You guys should come over soon to meet her!!

Danny Define - oh!