*
Phew*
Ok here's why I didn't come back in IRC later after the dinner.
We were invited by friends to have dinner, as I posted earlier in this thread. They live on a nice quiet street with big gardens/backyards (we are talking here of 150-200 feet deep lots) so they let their cats go outside. One of their cats came back, one of her hind legs not working anymore and with scratches on her face.
We thought she had been attacked by a racoon, run over by a car or something. One of our friends and my partner rushed off to the big emergency vet clinic, DMV, leaving the dinner's main course behind. Those of us who stayed weren't very hungry anymore.
After about five hours at the clinic, different tests were performed. The scratches on her face were superficial (thank god) and there were no signs of bite marks or torn flesh anywhere else on her body. They shaved the leg and face to be able to see the skin, and the leg had big bruises that were starting to appear.
The hurt leg doesn't have any fractures (good, that) but at the very least, one of the leg muscles and ligaments are torn. The surgical team will have a look at her today to determine if the torn tissue can heal by itself or if surgery is needed to get the cat back to normal.
There seems to be damage to the sciatic nerve. So they aren't sure if she was hit by a car, if she fell down from a great height or if a very heavy object fell on her and she yanked her leg out, tearing the muscles and ligaments. But they are leaning more on the heavy object theory though but nothing is ruled out for now.
They came home from the vet clinic around midnight and the cat was kept overnight for the surgery team to check her out today.
So that's why I didn't make it in IRC later last night.
I hope you all had loads of fun as usual, though.