Cat is missing a leg

Charlie, a 3 legged cat, likes to take the meerkat position
Originally uploaded by broadsurf

My cat is missing a leg and as a result he can and he likes to take up the meerkat position. By the meerkat position I mean he likes to stand on his back legs, use his tail as a stabiliser, a kind of third leg of a tripod and he then talks. The reason he can do it is because his lower back is extremely strong.

This came about because he has to use his lower back to lift his entire body to lift his remaining foreleg of the ground when he is walking or running. His style of walking and running in peculiar but pretty fast nonetheless.

The meerkat position gives him an edge. it gets him noticed and he notices things when he stands tall like this.

What cuts him out is that he does it so often and so naturally. Sometimes he will do it right in front of me so that we are almost face to face having a cosy conversation, which is always about food and where it is going to come from and when it is going to be delivered.

One of the keys to keeping a cat that is missing a leg is to keep him or her slim or at least not overweight as this aids mobility. That is if you want him or her to be mobile. Charlie is too bloody mobile. I am worried about him getting into trouble as I let him out. That is the norm in the UK. Only I am scared and the only solution for me is to move home!

I love Charlie. He is a great talker and he accepts his disability without complaint. I have no idea how he lost his leg. He lived with my mother until she died and she adopted him from a RSPCA shelter. He was her first non-purebred cat for many years.