These blasted cats will kill me yet, I was

studying (no I wasn't, I was browsing DM's blog) when I heard a thump and a screech and my heart suddenly got trapped between my molars because what are the chances that a brand new 6-storey fall will not kill either of them or, my biggest concern, even if it doesn't, how am I going to ensure that a 3-legged cat (remember the 6-storey fall remark?) will not become a 2-legged one thus being rearranged into an anatomical shape incompatible with life and why the hell must they gallop across the room (and if you think a 3-legged cat can't gallop you need to come round to my place) and throw themselves against the screen I managed to put up despite my almost having killed myself in the process and barely avoiding ending up as a pancake myself and there are still nights when in that very unguarded moment that precedes sleep I'm jerked awake by the memory of having seen her fall, having witnessed her frantic and all too brief clawing before she vanished and as I ran for the lift I was certain, I was absolutely certain that she was dead, not dead, not only dead, she would be lying there broken, splattered on the pavement but she was alive and I rushed her to the clinic and in the 20 min between the moment she fell and her arrival she'd managed to develop such a big pleural edoema that she couldn't have surgery and her poor back leg was in splinters, literally, and I realised I could stomach any injury but not so well when the animal was in pain, not then, and I had to check her temperature because of hypothermia and the vet was a former colleague who was overwhelmed with work and left me in charge of her until they could X-ray and I couldn't find her anus, I couldn't remember where it was and when I did I still couldn't find it for the longest time, and I had to wait 2 days till I knew for sure the edoema had subsided and she was out of danger, my poor little cat never went into shock but the infection was too far along - why the hell didn't they use external fixation? - so 3 surgeries later she was lacking a leg, very literally unbalanced and raging mad at the world and rightly so, it took her a full 10 days to stop living between the toilet and the bidet in perfect isolation, and I am haunted by that moment when she disappeared and I knew she was dead, and I am grateful that I did watch her fall because if I hadn't - but I can't bear to think about that, it breaks my heart every time I catch her gazing longingly at the tops of shelves and cupboards and I sometimes place her there and she purrs contentedly but she needs to keep every single leg now or life will be bleak and horrid and this is why I cannot simply cannot hear screeching sounds or thumps and am neurotic about windows and still ride the night mare, occasionally in broad daylight.