Please don't berate yourself for not asking for an x-ray. That's what vets are for, aren't they - to make those recommendations if they seem warranted. I know that we all have to be on the alert for our own health care and that of our animals - that is just the way things work - but if you miss something, in the course of earnestly doing your best in treating your loved one, you have certainly done your best. You should be congratulating yourself for giving care to your hurt one, and caring for him to the point where he is healed and happy again, and not berating yourself for not doing better.

I know how it is, though. My Sadie went through some ordeals that I blamed myself for. Once she was hit by a car (we think) and went to hide in the garage. We didn't find her until the next morning. It was very cold, and she was a white cat - and by that time her pink nose and paws were blue. She had a punctured lung. She survived and recovered completely, but I felt terrible, even though we had put up a search for her the night before. Then when we went to have her spayed, the vet spayed her without letting me know until afterward that she had been pregnant - with a litter of six. I didn't know. I was young then, and ignorant - I should have had her spayed earlier, but I didn't realize she could get pregnant in her first year. She lost a lot of blood and had a hard time - and then, of course, I felt terrible about the poor kittens. I would never have chosen to have done things that way if I had known. And the vet seemed very critical of me, as if I had tried to pull one over on him. But again, Sadie got better and fully recovered. She went through other ordeals - these I felt less responsible for, but looking back, I was responsible, in the sense that if she had been an indoor cat, as all mine are now, she would not have had these troubles. When she was only 2 1/2 years old, she got an abscessed paw and I took her to a new vet to have it surgically cleaned. He seemed to have a very insouciant manner, but I left her with him, never thinking that there would be problems - and later they called me to tell me that she had had a massive allergic reaction to the anaesthetic and hadn't made it. She had been under so many times before, I never imagined that could happen. My heart was broken. For years, I used to dream she had come back.

But anyway - I do know how it is to blame oneself for the injuries of one's animals - or children. Don't blame yourself. You have done every good thing for your Mud Pie. You have shown your love in every way, and now the whole thing is history and well in his past.