Day 17 - From Kaštela to Split

The kitten woke me up super early at around 5:30am by walking over my face. 🐈‍⬛ 😅 But she was still cuddly and layed down again, so I found no need in getting up so early. I planned to arrive at the vet around 10am, half an hour before arriving I should give a croatian woman a call for further instructions at the vet. So I thought I'd have plenty of time to pack and get there.
Well, I should have packed up this early because around 7am a local guy came to pick some figs from the tree next to my tent. 🥴 Let's say he wasn't amused about me being there and clapped his newspaper against the tent, but once he saw the kitten he didn't bother much anymore but I started packing up anyways then. He basically ignored me. 🙈😅 I don't think it was his olive tree yard but a neighbour or so and he was "stealing" the figs. I was stressed slightly anyways. 😅🥴

Even though it was only like 17km to the vet in Split, it took forever. I didn't want to go on the bigger roads with the kitten, so I trusted komoot in sending me on an alternative route - huge mistake, again. 🙈 Not to talk about super steep gravel (!) roads that ended up in road closure due to construction (which I realized after pushing the bike up the hill for at least 10 min, struggling to keep the kitten in the basket), I also ended up with no road at all on a roman historical site at 9am. At least it offered a beautiful view on Split. 🥴 I managed to get over it with the help of three German girls walking their dog. For the last six kilometers I've sworn myself to not get off the main road anymore, even though the ride through Split was hilly as hell.
I arrived at the vet around 10:20am and Marian was already waiting there. I tried multiple times to reach the croatian woman, but couldn't get through. After calls back and forth between the NGO we finally got hold of someone who told the vet about what to do (some legal issues with the quarantine time had to be discussed) and we finally got to have the appointment.

I didn't name the little kitten until then because I didn't want to get too attached since I may not be able to keep her. Also, I wasn't 100% sure about the gender. It is a she and they required me to name her for her documents. I named her "Mali", it's croatian and basically means "little". I liked the sound of it. :)

So the vet found that Mali has a previous injury on her back leg, a broken hip that healed the wrong way. The vet also told me that if she's not using the leg, it may be better to amputate it. After the X-ray, Mali got chipped and vaccinated, and finally got her travel papers. I will go to a vet once we're in Germany to get a second opinion on the leg. But in my opinion she's pretty fine with the leg and using it to jump and run around the appartment. The vet didn't see that since she was just sitting down on the floor frightened and not walking. So far from seeing her using the leg, I don't think it should be amputated, but will get a second opinion from another vet.

I was so glad to get in the car and back to Šibenik once we were done in Split instead of going back on my bike. I think Mali agrees..Read more