We had quite the adventurous cat week here at WMG. But first, some background.

On the publishing side of the business, we are decidedly cat people (and based on the sales of our cat-related fiction, many of you are, too). Every single publishing employee has at least one cat. Most of us have two or more. And that leads to a lot of cat-person bonding.

So, when one of us has a cat in distress, we all feel their pain.

For example, Dean drove the cats from the Rusch-Smith household from Lincoln City to Las Vegas on Tuesday to join Kris in their new digs. If you’ve never driven that far with cats, let me tell you it’s one of the more stressful things one can do.

When it came time to load the cats in the car, Gwyneth and Josh headed over to help. Once everyone was settled, Dean started the drive of great distress.

But they all made it safely, thank goodness, and Dean is still in one piece, so mission accomplished. Now comes the cat-adjustment-to-new-home period. But by the end of this week they should be right as rain.

Meanwhile, I had scheduled a dental cleaning for one of my cats that morning (I have a pair of 14-year-old brothers and an unrelated 12-year-old male Maine Coon). Sydney and Truman (the brothers) don’t act at all like they are 14, but the fact is that they are, so I worry more now than I did about procedures that require anesthesia. But Sydney’s bloodwork came back great (he has the numbers of a toddler cat, the vet said) and he made it through the procedure just fine. I dropped him off at home and headed back to work.

Not 10 minutes later I got a text from my husband, John, saying Truman hurt his back leg. Truman. Not Sydney. Confused, I rushed back home.

As we hurried off to the vet (who got us in 10 minutes after we called, thank goodness), we tried to piece together what happened. Sydney had been wandering around the house a bit disoriented. John heard a hiss, a thump, and a yowl, then Truman came limping around to the living room from the stairs and lay down unable to move further. Our best guess is they had a tiff (not uncommon when one cat comes home from the vet) and Truman tried to jump on the banister but missed and fell awkwardly on the stairs.

Whatever happened, it became apparent from the first X-ray that Truman had broken his back leg. Badly. His right hind femoral bone was in pieces.

Lincoln City is a small town, so no one here could handle that kind of injury. Our vet sent us to Portland to an emergency vet, who then sent us on to Vancouver, Wash., because the Portland clinic didn’t have an orthopedic surgeon available soon enough. Truman needed surgery ASAP if there was a chance of saving his leg. (And once again, it was Gwyneth to the rescue, coming over to sit with Sydney as he recovered from his anesthesia while we were 2.5 hours away.)

I won’t go into all the gory details but amputation and euthanasia were all on the table as potential outcomes at one point.

Thank goodness, Truman is as healthy as his brother and the surgeon (who was amazing) successfully repaired the break with a long bone plate, 17 screws, and a surgical pin.

Truman is back home and has begun the long recovery process. At least 6 weeks in human time (that’s like four months in cat time).

Thus concluded our cat adventure-filled spring break.

I hope your week was decidedly less traumatic.

Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer.