My cat has been fairly aloof this week — more aloof than cats tend to be, that is.

I suspected a few days ago that he’d been in a brawl, because I heard the distant screeching of two felines mixing it up late one night. He also reeked the next morning of cat spray — something I discovered when I picked him up to bring him inside (ew). Since he’s long-since been fixed, I knew he’d been up to no good. I briefly considered giving him a bath, but wasn’t in the mood for my arms to look like they were made of shredded beef.

Last night, after getting home from an appointment where I got the results from my thyroid biopsy, I discovered the reason for his aloofness: he had a serious head wound just behind his right ear, proabably the size of a quarter. A giant patch of black fur was missing, and in its place was pale pink flesh that looked like it had stopped bleeding only a day or two before. Yikes!

Congratulations, you don’t have thyroid cancer. But your cat is really jacked up.

I knew I’d have to steathily tackle him to get him into the pet carrier this morning, but his hind legs weren’t having it when he found out what I was up to. So I grabbed a towel, turned him into a burrito, tipped the carrier up on one end and lowered him into it. He scrambled out of his fabric tortilla and yowled all the way to the vet.

The doctor called a while ago. There’s an abscess where the fur is missing, so he’ll need to be hooked up to an IV, given antibiotics, sedated, cleaned out and stitched up — after they run some lab tests on him. The upside (for me, not for him) is that he’ll get to wear one of those stylin’ head cones for at least the weekend. The downside is that I plan to corral him in the bathroom that’s just on the other side of my bedroom, so I’m sure his displeasure will keep me up all night.

He also needs to get up to date on his regular shots. And a teeth cleaning. And a bath so that he can stop reeking like another cat.

Cha-ching.

Today, while I am already mourning the loss of the tax refund that I’d been able to sit on for the past few weeks, I am thankful it’s there to help my beloved furball get back into tip-top shape. Hoping the little guy won’t hold the events of today against me for too long, but assuming the sedation does the trick, I’m sure his fuzzy (har) memory will go a long way towards forgiveness.