"What are the considerations?  How big is it; does it need anything to work; does it go in the water or on land . . ." asks a pale greyish-blue tabby.

"I was thinking about this tall, this wide," Cam gestures, "it'll go right on the border of the water. I'm going to set it up so it's powered by the river flowing and it's self-cleaning so it won't need much maintenance, but it's always possible for things to break."

"I suppose over here would be best," she says, padding over to a a bit of shoreline between where Leopardfur went and another patch of reeds.  "Will it still be usable when the floods come or the river freezes?"

"Floods won't be a problem. It'll be able to pull non-frozen water from under the ice in the river, but it will be less good at getting power from the river flow then so it's going to charge a - yes, it will be able to work then."

"All right."

Leopardfur and a light brown cat are dragging a third, largely unresponsive cat out into the open, her by the scruff and the other tugging on a woven reed mat.  Presumably-Crookedstar has a broken jaw which at second glance is not an active injury and looks to have healed that way long ago, and his breathing is loud and labored.

Poor kitty. What does a germ scan get him.

It's mostly not anything his test can recognize.  Just a big old unidentifiable lung infection.  With pneumonia.

"Okay. I have some things I can try, but the last time I tried medicating a talking cat it didn't work very well; this may have been a mistake on my part or it may have been that talking cats are different from the cats I was able to get information about. I would not expect trying some medications for this to be dangerous but it might be unhelpful. If it doesn't work, I can try doing a lung transplant, replacing the infected lungs with healthy ones, which would be extremely unpleasant since there's something I don't currently understand about how painkillers work on talking cats but might help in the long run."

There's silence for a moment before the other cat who helped bring out Crookedstar says, "Do what you must.  It's unlikely to make things much worse."

"He can't talk himself?"

He does not seem very present, no.  Leopardfur and the other cat look to Crookedstar in hope but not expectation of a response and receive none.

Okay. Cam will try, with frequent consultation of references, conservative veterinary doses of antibiotics and expectorants.

Crookedstar coughs a few times.  His breathing is getting less loud in a way that might be improvement or might be rapid deterioration.

What do Cam's futuristic machines think about this mini model cat.

They think it's rapid deterioration!  Wow this model cat is right on the brink of death.

Okay but are the drugs HELPING. What do you RECOMMEND, Hellvet Mark 5.

They're at all helping, but way less than they should be and they're not making up for how roughly he was moved.  A lung transplant would be great if he survived it but it's unclear whether he would.

"My machine here is recommending the lung transplant option. It would be very risky, though, he's very fragile."

"If he's already going to die without it . . ."

"The medicine is helping, but much less than it should be and it's too early to say if it'd be enough. I will try the transplant if you guys want me to but I'm going to want to watch an instructional video first, I've never done this on a cat."

"All right."

Cam finds an instructional video of performing a lung transplant on a cat. It is two minutes long and includes the vet demon chattering in Arabic while replacing the lungs of a demonic tortie.

Once he has watched the video, he switches over to slide view, props his computer up where he can see it with his hands free, and carefully positions Crookedstar.

He's gotten yet worse in that time but - yes, okay, still seems to be breathing.

Crack chest, interpolate out the one lung, add the replacement almost right away, add more blood to replace what's being lost, replace second lung, more blood, close him up, seal everything back into place with thin layers of cells, ribs and muscles and skin -