We have an appointment first thing tomorrow. I have been treating it with anit-biotic ointment and hydrogern peroxide.
His appetite is good and he doesn’t seem to be in pain. He doesn’t mind you handling him or positioning him so you can see the would.
Smitty rarely goes outside, but he got out twice this week, so anything could have happened. But do you think he was hurt and it got infected? Or do you think it is a ulcer-like wound from something else?
I know you are not a vet…and I have an appointment for first thing in the morning. But have you ever seen anything like this on a kitty?
Strangely enough, it doesn’t look infected–the skin looks nicely pearly pink. And the wound edges are so clean–this had to been a bite of some kind–I don’t think he snagged himself on anything; there’s no jagged edges. Poor kitty. Hope the smell goes away. Gah.
It kinda looks like an ulcer to me too. Reminds me of a bedsore that’s gone deep. But strangely like eleanorigby said it doesn’t look infected. Man that’s odd. Keep us posted on what the vet says.
I third the “too clean to be infected” idea. Looks like an ulcer of some sort to me. The vet will tell you more, but it doesn’t look like a threatening wound to me.
Hey, newcrasher. That disgusting hole is how kitties deal with wounds. A bite or scratch forms an abscess, cat pulls all the hair out around it to keep it clean, then keeps the hole open so it can drain. Until you see the vet, you can hold a warm wet washcloth over the wound to encourage it to drain and help kitty keep it clean. I am having a sandwich, so I didn’t click, but I suspect it looks like the cat was shot, yes?
Looks like an abcess. Abcesses hurt before they drain, but then the pain usually goes away. Not a big deal. Warm compresses and antibiotic cream should take care of it. It’ll take a while to heal.
Last weekend the task of picking maggots out of a cat’s butt fell to me, suffice to say I am not squeamish when it comes to animal related icky things. The most common cause of a stinky open wound in a cat is a bite wound abscess. Does your cat go outside?
Bite wounds puncture the skin, inject bacteria, close up quickly and then the bacteria cooks into a nice pus soup under the skin. It forms a pocket, then a lump, then the skin over the lump gets necrotic and the abscess breaks open and drains all that nice stinky pus. Actually, once it drains and the cat (or you) clean it up a little it doesn’t look infected, but it is. Even though it looks clean there’s still bacteria there and it’s always a good idea to get it looked at and get the kitty on some antibiotics so the wound will heal.
That is not a typical spot for a cat bite though but that doesn’t rule it out. Other things can cause punctures that abscess like a bite wound; spiky plants, sharp sticks, protruding nails, fence spikes or other sharp objects. But since you said it was extremely stinky that pretty much says abscess of some sort.
Yeah, kitties can get nasty abcesses. I once picked up my cat and nasty rotten blood spilled down my chest. He had a really large and nasty abcess that he actually needed stitches and plastic cone collar for. Another time a different kitties head looked kinda lumpy so I gently poked it and the most indescibably foul smelling subsgtance oozed out. That time I was able to gently express the pus and clean it myself.
The point is cats get abcesses pretty frequently and they often won’t show any indications of pain or distress.
My cat Ulysses recently got bit on his ear, and within 2 days, it was horribly stinky. I took him to the vet and he was on oral antibiotics for 2 weeks, plus I put antibiotic cream on it, and cleaned it with a special cleaner.
I couldn’t believe how smelly it was! He’s all better now, thank goodness.
I hope your Kitty gets well soon. I know that when my Buffy (now in Kitty heaven) had an abscess tooth it ate through her cheek. I had NO idea until I started noticing little blood drops. I felt like such a bad mom. She had been eating normal, or so I thought. It was like all of a sudden there was a big problem.
Take care of him. I’m sure the Vet will fix him up today.
I’m sure he’ll be fine. The most gentle cat I ever owned got into a scrap one day, which I discovered a few days later when I found the exact same wound. Took him to the vets and got it cleaned (and an anti-biotic shot IIRC) and he was good as new. He was about 13 at the time so I was a bit concerned.
Decades ago my cat at the time came home with a neat round wound like he’d been shot. We thought he had. The vet extracted a long cat tooth from the hole and gave it to us. Probably a catfight my guy "won, if you could call it that.
So I concur…bite wound, probable catfight, abcessed.
Don’t feel bad about not noticing it earlier. I had a cat with a similar wound several years ago; the way it was found is that I had taken the cat to the vet for unrelated reasons (immunizations probably). When the appointment was 99% over, the vet tech decided to trim the cat’s nails, and that involved holding the cat tightly. It was only then that the abscess burst and the vet was like “holy crap!”
Nobody had noticed until it burst, including the vet who had done a normal check up on him.
If he’s not acting like it hurts when you poke him near it, it doesn’t. Cats are capable of acting not-sick for quite a while, but if you poke them where they’re broken they’ll sink their teeth into your hand lickety-split.
Cats do all kinds of strange things to themselves outside. We had one once who managed to dock her own tail by getting it caught in some dental floss or thin string. We freaked out pretty badly, but the cat didn’t – the vet said whatever she did cut right through the nerves down to the bone, so the cat wasn’t particularly concerned, even though it looked pretty awful to us hyoo-man slaves. She was a white cat, so once we had her tail bobbed to the newer, shorter length little kids would shout “bunny!” whenever they saw her sitting in our front yard.
Vet visit + antibiotics + a couple of weeks + maybe one of those collars = cat who is good as new.
shudder I haven’t clicked. But I still remember the time my cat got an abscess right on his back. I had to follow him around with a rag when it went pop.
