When Simon was young, he broke one or more bones in his right hind leg

My cat Simon broke his right hind leg close to the back foot, or rather broke some bones within his right hind leg. It happened when he was not much more than a kitten. It happened in the living room. Simon, like most forest cats, both liked to climb, as well as to be high up. He had just been up on a bench, and jumped down to the floor. He jumped via an empty but very big and heavy wooden frame for a painting. He used this large wooden frame as a middle landing on the way down. This caused the frame to lose its balance, and it started to fall. When Simon reached the ground, the frame came crashing down on him from behind.

It did not go well. The frame caught the right hind leg on the cat quite bad. Simon moved well afterwards, but showed signs of hurting when we touched him. So we took Simon to the veterinarian who said some small inner bones around the foot where broken. The veterinarian did recommend us to do nothing. "Cats has a lot of bones, much more than humans" he told us. "He will probably become well by healing on his own with no visible reduced functionality". In his view, it was likely the leg were going to heal better without surgery than with. Surgery would be very complicated, if even possible, due to the very many bones in a cat leg and foot.

He did seem to be right. Simon healed and moved normally. But when he got older, that hind leg was a weak spot, and when older Simon showed tendencies to be more stiff or even possibly hurting in that hind leg.