I’ve just come back from the vets with my poor little companion sporting a gigantic hole on his rump. t seems that a fight he had last week left him with a festering abcess that must have been torturing him for the last few days, and I didn’t act soon enough.
big TMI warning…
I feel so bad for not catching it before he had to have his butt clipped and a cupful of dead bodily fluid squeezed out of it. It had honestly reached the point where his bum was no so much clipped as plucked - the skin being so mostly dead that the fur fell off! Ug. Yes, I was indeed nauseous.
It’s just that cats, well, you know how cats are. They only whine when hungry, not so much when something annoys them. He’d been walking around fine, eating OK etc. He had just over the last few days taken offense at being patted there.
I feel guilty for letting my little mate put up with his gangrenous sore (nothing visible on the outside at all) and not hurried him to the doc at the first chance. (actually my motorbike has been in the shop for two weeks, so I’m trying to work that into some sort of excuse)
In apologies for inflicting this tale upon the electrons, I’ll share my new favorite quote from Terry Pratchett:
dman, I had a similar situation with a cat who disappeared for several days. When he came home, I didn’t realize that he had an abcessed injury on his neck until it started to smell, I attempted to clean it, and (ulp) I was faced with similar circumstances.
The word from my vet: Cats heal so quickly that unless you’re aware of an injury right off the bat, it’s not uncommon for them to develop an abcess like that…the skin closes over and then the infection sets in. With my cat, I spent many, many hours cleaning that nasty wound out and pouring peroxide and Betadine into it until it granulated and healed. It was absolutely disgusting…you know when your cat shakes his head and you hear a…flapping noise, it’s bad.
Hope your kitty gets better soon. What did the doc say?
Well, although the doc said that in a human it would be an ‘intensive care’ situation, he’d probably stabilize within a week-10 days.
I’ll be taking him back at the end of the week, when hopefully the skin is in a position to be pulled further together -
yep, the chunk was missing to the point that edges couldn’t meet any more. A patch about 3x6 cm - no skin. on a 7-month old fella. Urgh.
What confused me most was the complete invisibility of such a thing. I go over him several times a week for fleas & such, because I know what he’s up to with his wild mates. He was ultra sensitive for the last two days, but there was not even an abrasion in that area. but once under anesthetic the flesh just peeled off. :eek:
Ah well, we learn. Some of us survive.
Yep,**bodypoet ** , I am set up for a twice daily Betadine bath + antibiotic administration into the foreseeable future. Good thing the little man has learnt to put up with me poking him around. He’s one of the few cats you can wash and shampoo without chain-mail gloves.
This one also did a disappearing act for three days before returning wounded. It’s Spring :rolleyes:
Yesterday I was going to post this escapade simply as a MPSIMS:My cat is now orange! WTF? - he’d been sleeping in, - well I still don’t know what, but he used to be mostly white, now he’s mostly ochre - and it don’t wash off. Mad thing.
He is booked to get knobbled if his health is up to it on the next visit. Should have done it by now I guess. Bleedin Machismo.
He’s now just walking into furniture slowly, wondering why he’s unable to jump up onto the seats, and presumable getting miffed at me putting him back into his padded box all the time. Urgh, there’s drips all over the floor - Do NOT want that on my cushions.
Apologies to anyone that got pulled in here by my title - I just spent a few hours wandering around repeating to myself “I’m never going to have kids, I’m never going to have kids…”
.dan.
Don’t worry about it. It’s an instinct thing- cats in the wild can’t display signs of being hurt or sick. This shows their weakness and makes them more desireable to anything that might want to eat them. The important thing is that it’s taken care of now. Best wishes for speedy healing for your kitty.
My cat hid a purulent wound on his face for a while. It was shocking when we finally found it. I can understand why - poor guy had to wear a lampshade for two weeks afterwards.
Poor kitty! I haven’t ever had to deal with that with a pet. My previous owner – um, cat – would have HATED HATED HATED my having to wash it out, however, so it’s a good thing he never got hurt like that!
Thanks for the sympathy. He seems chipper enough today.
I’m currently trying to explain to him that he can’t go out and play, and if he keeps trying to tidy himself up he’ll find his head in a pottle.
I’m one to talk, poking at scabs is one of my favorite hobbies.
One of those other ways that cats are so unlike dogs, is that they just won’t ‘go’ when someone is watching, so I have to stand behind a bush when escorting him for a stroll in the garden.
My cat once had an abcess that the vet himself didn’t notice throughout an entire exam! It was on his side, I had no clue it was there, and the vet went through all the basic checks and didn’t feel it or know it was there. It was only when he handed the kitty over to a vet tech for a shot that it was found - the vet tech had to hold my cat pretty tightly to give him his shot, and the absess ruptured from the pressure.
I’ve been a cat owner - er, staff member - for many a long year, and far too many of my cats have been the combative type (“You talkin’ to ME? Come on this side of the fence and say that, you half-dog!”). I learned to look for the warning signs of abscesses after a while, but I still have found the vast majority of them when they ruptured, not before. Cat wounds do get very nasty almost invisibly, and in my case, it seems like it’s always the cat with the longest hair that gets into the most fights.
Luckily, cats do heal very well once you can start treatment. I hope the little guy’s improving daily.
Should have done it by now I guess. Bleedin Machismo.