We have two ‘hedge’ cats that were born wild but whom we have been feeding since they were kittens, six years now. We consider them part of the family. One of them, Poppy, will allow us to pet her and even pick her up for a few seconds, whereas the other is more wary and will only play bite/paw us. Although we feed them dry cat food once or twice a day, both are excellent hunters and are otherwise independent.
We noticed four days ago that Poppy seems to be injured. Both of her back legs are bent at a funny angle. Instead of the usual 30 degree (approx) angle forward bend at her back knees, both are closer to 60 degrees. Her back legs look a bit like a rabbit’s. She is walking more slowly than normal and her hind end is lower than usual (obviously). She is actually still able to run like this, and we even saw her scramble over a chain link fence using mostly her front legs. I saw her pounce after a mouse today too.
She doesn’t seem to be in any great pain and is acting otherwise normally. She coming to eat and is purring when we pet her.
But she is clearly injured. My guess is that she was hit by a car, though I don’t see signs of any other injury. Most likely one or both legs are broken. If there was internal damage I imagine we would have seen some sign by now.
Anyway, we want to take her to the vet. On the first day we noticed her injury I tried to pick her up and put her in a cat carrier, but she started hissing and wriggling at the last second and I panicked and dropped her (point of reference: the husband of my colleague got badly mauled by their house cat when he tried to pick her up against her will, requiring surgery and weeks of antibiotics). Two days ago we borrowed a cat trap from the local SPCA, but so far it has not worked. Poppy seems to realise that it is a trap. She walks all the way up to the weight sensitive trigger plate, sniffs the food, and backs out.
So we seem to be at an impasse. But I have several questions I hope Dopers might be able to answer:
Assuming her legs are broken, and given what I said about her apparent condition, what will happen if we don’t get her treatment? Can she heal on her own? I guess her legs would be permanently deformed. We live in a suburban area and our yard is mostly closed off (though we once did see a family of foxes). She does have access to roads though.
If we do manage to get her to a vet, and they confirm her legs are broken, what type of treatment will they recommend? Casts?
She has lived outside her entire life, and never been in captivity. If her legs are put in casts, where will her recovery take place? I guess she would have to stay in the house for several weeks? I can imagine she would not take the transition well and might even hurt herself. Or can she be kept (partially sedated?) in a cage for this time? I should mention that we also have two indoor cats in the house.
Any suggestions on how I might improve my chances of capturing her?
As the clock is ticking, I would appreciate answers kinda fast.
Whatever happened, a long fall or car running over her I bet her hips are injured, broken or displaced. If she walking it’s not the lower part of the limb.
The longer they are displaced or not reduced the less likely medical intervention will help with out a surgical repair (just my opinion, I’m not a vet).
This gonna take some $$$ to fix.
See if you can get tranquilizer from the vet. If you can get her close enough to make sure only she gets it and you’re sure you can find her when she’s asleep.
According to the problem they may want to euthanize her.
I think I’d probably just let her be. There’s no way the stress would help her.
They sell various animal catchers (nets and poles) on Amazon, ranging from $30-$100ish. The nets look a bit less traumatic, but the cat isn’t going to like it either way.
They also make pet grooming gloves to help protect your hands & arms while grabbing, or falconry/welding gloves might work in a pinch.
If she trusts you enough to let you put a pill in her mouth (or in liquid form in wet food/milk), you can get a drug called gabapentin at the vet, which is a sedative often used for long car rides or fireworks. That might make grabbing her a bit easier.
Alternatively, if you can lure her in close with food/treats, maybe you can throw a big towel or blanket around her and just grab her through that, like a big bundle of fluff. She’ll probably scream and hiss and mrow the whole time, but you can carry her bagged like that all the way to the vet, and they’ll probably sedate her there. Just use some breathable material so she doesn’t suffocate, and try to wrap her up relatively tight, dangling her in the bundle, so she doesn’t hurt herself. A pillowcase might work if she’s small enough.
Be warned though… if you don’t have pet insurance, surgery is likely to be very expensive (thousands of dollars). Even if they don’t do surgery, just doing an x-ray and other treatments will add up to hundreds at least. If they need to keep her overnight or for several days, it will be hundreds more.
Here’s what I would do:
Keep using the cat trap, but tie it open and let her get some REALLY good food in it. Leave it like that for a week at least, making sure that she will go in and eat. Once she’s reliably going after the goodies, set the trap for real.
Be prepared to keep her in a crate for several weeks. Get a decent sized dog crate, cover it with a sheet, and let her be as much as possible. Give her a box to hide in and you’ll be able to feed and clean without overly stressing her.
Once healed she can go back out to her previous life, and she’ll be fine.
If so: get her a can of nice distracting tuna. Get a really good quality cat carrier, make sure all its connections are tight, place it close but out of sight with the door open and washable or trashable padding in there. Put on a pair of long very heavy gloves and ditto jacket as armor against claws and teeth. Set your mind to ‘absolutely do not drop or let go of cat no matter what’, you’ll only get one chance. Have someone else she semitrusts near the carrier.
Pick up distracted cat. Do not let claws or teeth near your eyes! (I’d recommend goggles, but they might freak out the cat, preventing you from getting near.) Insert cat into carrier – backwards is easier. Close door. Make sure door is closed. Put in car and take to vet. (Call the vet. first.)
If that technique won’t work, because you already took your one chance at it and now she won’t let you grab her, try saje’s technique with the havahart trap. Get one that can be set up with both ends open, and leave it that way a while, with tuna in the middle. Replace tuna with fresh tuna and/or other treats at least daily.
If vet. says problem is treatable, take cat home to recover, shut cat for however long vet. says is necessary in one room with nothing you mind having destroyed in it. Or a large crate if you can’t provide such a room. Make sure there’s someplace in the room (or crate) where cat can hide – this is absolutely essential.
If vet. says problem is treatable but cat won’t be able to live outside – take vet’s advice with large grain of salt; it’s surprising what cats can manage. Also, cat may become accustomed to being in by the time she’s healed.
If vet. says problem is not treatable, euthanize and cry.
Please report back. We’ll cry with you if necessary.
It certainly seems a vet is needed for this and, as mentioned above, that will cost money. At the least you can probably get a diagnosis without spending too much.
Then, you need to decide if the cat can be fixed at a cost you are willing to pay or if it is fine and can be released back to its usual life or if it is best to be euthanized (as the humane thing to do).
You can’t really know until a vet advises you about it.
Fingers crossed it all turns out well.
When I was very young (like 4-5 years old) a stray cat bit me/scratched me…very minor. I’m not sure how my father caught her but he just plopped her into a pillow case. Not elegant or happy for the cat but it worked and we got her to the vet (I guess for a rabies check…again…I was very young so my memory of it is barely there). I do have a vague memory that the cat was not pleased about being in the sack but she was fine even if a bit pissed off.
We have a cat that is evil and has injured both human and cat family members (fortunately, all the wounded have made full recoveries). I have these gloves on hand in case we need to handle him against his will.
I wouldn’t want to guarantee that a panicked cat couldn’t shred a pillowcase. Might be easier to get her into one than into a carrier, though? and then put pillowcase and cat into carrier, opening pillowcase a hair as you close the carrier door?
@CairoCarol, those look like great gloves! I think I’d probably use my wood stove gloves; but those look even better – and apparently could also be used as wood stove gloves, when not needed for hazardous cats.
The carrier I have has doors on both the top and the front, and I highly recommend getting one like that if you can. It is so much easier to drop a struggling cat into the carrier from the top than push her in from the front. Not to mention that the top has a larger opening. Just make sure the cat doesn’t knock the door shut while you’re trying to get her in there.
I haven’t seen one like that but it does seem like a good idea. I was thinking mostly that the connections holding the thing together, and the door latches, all need to fasten securely and tightly.
If using one with a front door only: it’s easier to put the cat in butt first than face first (legs will be pushed into the door space by the sides if going in butt first, but a cat going in face first will spread out and grab onto the outside of the opening with all appendages if given the chance.) And it may be easier to stand the carrier up on its end so the front door becomes a top door; though you may need to wedge it in place so it doesn’t fall over.
Yes. The end stand, pushed up against an immovable wall. A brave person could work to brace it.
One with fast reflexes.
If the cat escapes your grip, they are goin’ all claws and hair, the opposite way.
I’ve seen vet techs with a hold on an unwilling victim that I can’t replicate. It’s a scruff and all paws thing held away from their face.
I never could get the grip to make that work.
Really you’ll need a hold for about 1 minute if the box is ready.
You gotta get the cat captured to do anything. So this should be your first task.
I especially note the advice on capture techniques. I wish I had thought of this before I made my failed attempt. I was hurrying to catch a flight and was literally 10 minutes from leaving the house when we discovered Poppy’s injury. Because of this I didn’t really think through my strategy and it turned out badly.
I will be better prepared next time. We have the trap (armed with tuna) and also the cat carrier (turned on its end). I hope one of them works.
But does anyone have any thoughts on what will happen if she is not treated, assuming it is “only” broken legs?
I would look for a pressure-plate-type cat trap, a good one that actually works reliably.
Bones heal, but would you really want to walk around on untreated broken legs? Plus, they can heal malrotated and/or malaligned leading to further pain and/or mechanical dysfunction down the road = future orthopaedic surgery.
Hard to tell, but she might easily wind up with gangrene in the wounds, or systemic infection, if there’s any broken skin at all; or, even if none of that happens, sufficiently hampered in movement that something catches and kills her.
And, even if she’s not letting it show, she’s got to be in pain.
Quick update on Poppy. Yesterday evening we managed to capture her in the trap we got at the SPCA. We had almost given up hope of capturing her, so that is good news. We took her to the vet, who kept her overnight and then examined her. It seems that her legs are not broken, but badly sprained. She probably wasn’t hit by a car but more likely had a fall. She will need to see an orthopedic specialist in the next couple of days to learn what, if any, treatment is possible. We were hoping that she could stay at the vet until she sees the specialist, but they said we need to take her home tonight.
So now we are faced with the question of what to do with her tonight (or longer). Releasing her back into the wild is out of the question as we would not be able to capture again for the veterinary followup.
I guess the most likely thing is that we put her in our dining room and shut her off from the indoor cats and also family members. But I am concerned about how she will react to being indoors for the first time in her life. And if she is indoors, do we release her into the room, or do we keep her in the trap? At the moment we are thinking only of the next few days until she can see the specialist. But there is also the question of where we keep her if she has some sort of treatment with a recovery period. That could last for weeks…
And if she is in the dining room, should we keep the blinds open so she can see outside, or would it be better to have them closed?
If you have a room you can thoroughly shut off, I’d release her into the room.
Before releasing her: make sure all your other creatures are out of the room; make sure anything easily destroyed is out of the room; make sure there are comfortable places she can hide (which you can get her out of for her next appointment, but don’t disturb her in them before then); close all the windows entirely at least until she calms down (she may destroy window screens and escape, especially if the screens are fabric; wire ones may hold); check for other openings, including ones you think are too small for a cat to get through, and block them if there are any; make sure there’s a cat pan, and also that nothing else in the room remotely resembles a cat pan (and it’s possible she may use the wrong thing anyway); put down water and tempting food right close to the carrier.
Put the carrier close to and facing a hiding place. Open the carrier door but allow her to stay in there if she wants. She may not come out until you leave the room. Leave the carrier in the room with the door open, so she can get in and out of it and consider it one of her safe places to hide.
Be very careful going in and out of the room, and make sure when you do so that doors to the outside are all shut, in case she manages to get past you.
She’s almost certainly either going to hide, or to ricochet around the room trying to find a way out. Hope for the first, or at least for the second to rapidly turn into the first. Hiding is actually more likely, but there must be hiding places.
If instead you find her, within the first few hours, sprawled out on top of the bed or a chair – then you have a cat who’s been in a house before and liked it.
If you can’t find her – look up as well as down, and in spaces you think are too small for a cat.
ETA: glad you managed to get her to the vet! and that it seems that the damage is indeed survivable. But she’s in danger if outside before it heals, as her movement’s got to be hampered.
Sorry if this is a really dumb question, but would it be possible for us to keep her in the cage (carrier) for a couple of days? I am worried about having to catch her again (even in the room) and getting her back in the cage. Would that be inhumane? I think that the vet kept her in the cage for the last 24 hours.
I think this is a “depends on the cat”; which unfortunately isn’t much help, as it amounts to “you won’t know unless you do it.” She may develop an absolute dread of being shut into any sort of cage/carrier if she’s shut in there for days, or she may not.
I’d be inclined to let her out in the room. When it’s time to get her back in the carrier, throw a blanket over her if necessary (you’ll have a better idea by then whether it’s necessary.)
How large is the cage? It might be possible to get a dog cage that’s large enough for her to live in, but small enough to put on your car. If you go that route, you need to put food, water, and a litter pan in the cage. You need to clean the litter really regularly, and make sure she always has access to food and water. And you should cover part of the cage with something opaque (or put the cat carrier in it) so she has a place to hide that feels safe. Stress is not good for healing.
small room with out much in it, with litter box, food, and water. closet, bathroom, that sort of thing.
when we first caught winken the wondefull we had her overnight in the vestibule. i would check on her through the night. she settled into the litter box. at some point in the wee hours of the morning she used the litter box properly and disappeared from sight.
i was baffled until i spotted her balanced on top of the coat hooks.
an outdoor cat will feel most comfortable at height.
I hope she makes it through!