The Slow Learner

Idiot cat. 
Yesterday evening, as I was cooking, she appeared from the garden with a limp. I immediately assumed that she had tried to swat a bee (again) and had got stung (again). 
But the limp was actually quite bad. Once in the house through her flap, I followed her a bit and it was clear that she couldn't put any weight at all on her front right paw. 
She looked a bit lost and quite in pain. It's a good thing that she actually loves the painkiller syrup we got from the vet when she had the no-kittens-for-you-kitty surgery. She literally licks it straight off the syringe and is careful not to lose a single drop. 
She then ate a fair bit of fried chicken, a sure sign that things were not that bad after all. 
She then conked out on our bed and I decided to leave her alone and monitor the situation after her nap. 
Two hours later, it didn't look good. Her paw was noticeably swollen and she could put any weight at all on it. 
She still tried to escape to the garden on three legs but I decided on her behalf that this was definitely not a good idea. 
She gets hammered daily by Hetty next door when she has the full use of her fully clawed paws, I couldn't let her out vulnerable and with a 25% diminished arsenal.
She wasn't happy. Not one bit. She protested in front of the flap and limped away. 
By then Mrs Raheny was convinced that her paw had been crushed. She was already drawing a list of potential perpetrators. 
Mimi and I didn't buy into the targeted attack theory but we were both getting worried that it wasn't the usual daft-cat-swats-bee episode. Her paw was really big and she really couldn't put any weight on it. I thought that maybe she had walked on a rat trap, or had her paw caught in a closing door, or worse caught under the wheel of a car. 
The possibility of broken bones was growing. 

Then at 9pm, she disappeared altogether. The cat flap was in the locked position, all windows were closed or barely open enough to slide a finger out, not a cat. We looked everywhere in the house. All her sleeping spots. All her playing spots. All her hiding spots. 
The place is not a mansion and we were quite systematic and increasingly worried. 
We looked several times in the little canyon between the drawers under the attic bed where she played so much as a kitten. Nope. No wild looking little eyes when shining a torch therein. Finally Mrs Raheny pulled both drawers to see if she was stuck behind. She wasn't behind. She was asleep in old school books and stationary in one of the drawers.
Mrs Raheny was convinced that she had hidden there to die. 
She hadn't. She had more fried chicken after being carried downstairs. 
The idiot cat had managed to get me worried. 

Fast forward to today. 
Her paw is back to its normal size. 
She got stung on her paw by a bee. Again. 
She is now almost back to normal. Back to being an idiot cat. She's still keeping her paw off the ground while lazing in the sunshine but I have no doubt that she'll be back to her swatting old ways as soon as she gets a chance.