Do I need to take my cat to the vet?

Factual Questions
1

I don’t mean Tuesday. I mean right now. Here’s the situation:

At 5:15, forty-five minutes after his regular vet closed its doors for the holiday, something opened up on the cat’s neck, depositing wet, sticky, but only kind of bloody fluid all over his fur and leaving a huge open wound. (Okay, roughly the size of a nickel, except a lot more oval, and really ugly. No telling how deep it is.)

I washed him off with a washcloth, diluted some antibiotic spray and applied it.

Now my question is: Do I call the emergency vet? This would entail $$$$, putting the cat into the cat carrier (which he hates), digging the car out yet again, and driving miles on streets where I will have a good chance of getting stuck and into a neighborhood I am unfamiliar with.

Or do I wait until Tuesday morning and call his regular vet, who is two blocks away?

What I think is that this is a sore from a previous encounter with a squirrel (a couple of weeks ago) which abscessed and just broke open and drained. I think that because the cat was sitting in the window all fine and healthy and then suddenly he was licking himself like mad and avoiding human contact. It is not something that just happened. Anyway he was checked out after the squirrel incident, has had all his shots, and has not been outside unsupervised since then. He went out in the backyard to play in the snow but didn’t leave the yard.

I am worried about him, but I know from sad experience that if I call the emergency vet they will say, “Better bring him in.” And if they say that I will have to take him in. It is really the drive more than the money.

FWIW, he seems pretty normal and is doing his normal healthy-cat things, not his normal feeling-bad and laying-low routine.

2

IANAVet-yet it seems that the issue is resolving itself. Monitor the kitty, and as long as general health remains constant, let things be. Should kitty exhibit any other malaise, then contact the vet. Some of my woods kitties have been in fights, gotten torn up, and have healed nicely.

3

Does you regular vet have a answering service or an answering machine with a number for someone on call? I’d start there. They may tell you to leave it and come in Tuesday or they may be willing to come to your house or meet you at the office. Or they may tell you to go to the E-Vet.

4

My vet publishes his home phone in the phone book. See if yours is in there and maybe give him a quick call in the morning.

5

I think you’re correct - your kitty had an abcess that has opened up and drained. Looks gross but as far as the cat’s concerned things are better now than they have been in a while.

Is kitty acting normal in other ways? Still alert, walking around OK, wants to eat?

If the answer to all that is yes - then IMHO you are fine to wait till Tues. At that time you can talk things over with your vet.

And even though I’ve not seen your cat and thus have no business giving you medical adviceabout him - I am a veterinarian.

6

Thanks, all–

Kitty acting normal, except for occasionally obsessively trying to lick the wound, which fortunately he can’t reach. He particularly tried this after I sprayed him (with 1% hydrogen peroxide, which had to smart). In general he’s pretty stoic, but he does have a retreat that he’s gone to when he’s felt really bad, and he did not go there tonight. He went to sleep with my kid, as usual, leaping onto the top bunk, as usual.

I’ve left a message on his vet’s answering machine, so we will see.

What timing.

7

Right, that sounds like an open/burst abcess. Now that it has burst and is clean, you are likely safe to wait until you can see your regular vet (who will give better service anyway, IMHO, as he knows your cat better). Monitor his condition, and see your vet first thing.

All I really can add to Long Time First Time’s excellent advice is: Do not give the cat aspirin.

The abcess may seal back over and start to get more pus in there. Press *gently, *apply a little H2O2 to the outside, and apply warm damp cloth as needed.

You did fine.

8

It’s all about how your cat is acting–if he is well within the “normal” range of behavior, then I’d keep the wound clean and just make sure to observe him carefully in the next few days. Is his appetite good? Are his eyes bright and clear? Is he hydrated (pinch a fold of skin, lift, and release it; if it bounces back quickly, he’s fine)? Is his litterbox full of normal-looking deposits? Then I’d say things look good. Definitely have a vet look at it next week, though, and of course take him to an emergency clinic if there’s a sudden change.

We had to take one of our kitty overlords to an emergency clinic on a Sunday, and it cost as much to have her there for 24 hours as it was to have her with my vet and on an IV for the next four days. If you can avoid the bill, I would, but it Miss Mija’s case, it was life or death. (Important kitty safety tip: lilies of all kinds are extremely toxic to cats. That was one expensive birthday bouquet…)

9

IANAV but I’ve had many a fighting cat which resulted in many a vet visit.

As long as the wound is open and draining, kitty should be ok. Keep an eye on it, keep it open and clean. If it starts to get worse, kitty starts to hide away and act punky or the wound closes and you can’t open it, get to the vet.

Oh yeah, few things smell worse than cat pus. That smell is normal. (insert pukey smiley)

10

Wot they said! Sounds like it was an abcess that has burst and the contents have drained out - you’re doing all the right things for your kitty. Keep the wound clean, try to keep the cat indoors and just keep an eye on the wound to make sure it doesn’t get worse. You might want to consider taking the cat to the vet when they’re open again in case they want to prescribe more anti-biotics etc. Otherwise, things sound like they’re sorting themselves out.

11

An ex of mine had a cat, it developed a lump.

One day she was stroking it, the abcess burst and the cat started purring like crazy.

If the cat is happy, then either it is pretty healthy - or it has been licking toads.

LongTimeFirstTime’s advice is the professional version
@LTFT would you recommend antibiotics if the wound is healing without them ?

12

No, I would not. Giving antibiotics would probably slow down the overall course of the problem - they tend to keep abcesses in “suspended animation” while they’re administered. As soon as you stop, they come to a head again.

If you are a very catious sort, take the cat’s temperature. (Rectal thermometer, not something your cat will enjoy). If his temperature is over 103o F, he’s lethargic, dehydrated (his skin does not go back to normal if you pinch it up) then see someone right away to get antibiotics prescribed.
Also, it’s probably a good thing your cat can’t lick off the hydrogen peroxide - it usualiy causes animals to vomit if it’s ingested. As a matter of fact, when we want a dog or cat to vomit for some reason, usually giving a teaspoon of H2O2 will do it.

13

Thanks for the clarification

  • we always reckoned that our cat got better medical treatment than ourselves
  • but occasionally he would be whisked off into the back room, and return looking shocked :-}
14

I always heard that another reason a cat will purr is if it’s in pain or scared.

Is that right?

15

I’ve heard that too, that cats use purring to calm themselves. Only evidence I’ve seen of it is when I had a queen who purred the entire time she was giving birth to a bunch of kittens.

The cat’s wound looked a lot better today, and the vet impressed me by calling back to see how he was. He is definitely going in on Tuesday. He’s got another apparently swollen place, also on his neck, that needs checking in case it’s another abscess that’s going to do the same thing. Again, thanks to the vets and others who replied–it made me feel better about what I was doing for him.

16

How’s the kitty tonight?

17

Thanks for asking. He was fine–wound closed, no apparent need for stitches, a small tube of some kind of ointment to put on–until about half an hour ago, when he scratched the thing open again.

We had discussed whether to put some kind of padding on his back paw so he couldn’t do that very thing, only it looked like, since he hadn’t done it so far, he wasn’t going to. At least he can’t lick the ointment off, but I wonder if applying it made the wound itch. Or reminded him that he had it and therefore needed to scratch at it.

18

Healing wounds itch in and of themselves, at least some of mine did. You might put that padding on his feet so he can’t re-open the wound. It’s just as the new skin is really getting started growing that the area itches the worst, IME.

19

Thanks for the update, Hilarity N Suze. Give kitty a big hug from me. Our ShihTzu decided to lick open his castration wound which then had to be stapled shut which he then nibbled a staple out when he had the e-collar off for 12 seconds…

The little buggers are exhausting, and wonderful, all at the same time.

May his healing go quickly and without any more incidents.

20

The kitty’s problem now is that he desperately wants to go outside. Apparently he alone has been protecting the property from marauding hordes of encroaching cats and he takes this very seriously. This afternoon he escaped while my son was outside playing in the snow. According to the kid, “he went to the bathroom a lot”–only after a thorough casing of the yard could we get him to come back inside, and he wanted right back out. Apparently he had left some territory unmarked. But he did not get back out.

Our other cat, by contrast, never goes outside, and also never, ever has emergency trips to the vet.