I have 25 plus years working with animals and seeing some pretty disgusting things.
I have owned (been owned by) about 16 cats over the same time period.
And yet, I still can’t stop gagging and when I encounter a fresh wet glistening hairball. I’m gagging now just thinking about it! gag
I try to look away but my body keeps retching for several minutes. gag I try to think about other things but it just doesn’t stop. gag Then I have to try to pick the offending item up whilst looking the other way and constantly gagging. gag I never actually throw up but the gagging gets painful enough. GAG
I have picked maggots out of rotten festering wounds. I have seen eyeballs hanging out of sockets. I have smelled the rotting dead puppy or kitten in the too long in dystocia dog/cat and seen these tiny corpses fall apart as we try to remove them from their mother. I have seen disembowelments where the animal managed to run around dragging their intestines behind them. I have drained abscesses and even found a few cuterebra larvae hanging out in the wounds. I have seen and cleaned up rivers of bloody diarrhea from parvovirus or HGE. Suffice to say I have seen and smelled some really nasty stuff over the years but the fresh hairball is my Achilles heel.
You can take this thread where ever you want; talk about hairballs gag or your particular Achilles Heel or make it yet another thread on disgusting things. I’m just going to take a few minutes gag to get this retching under control, I’m still having hairball flashbacks. GAG
Oh god! I hear one of the cats horking as I type this! Arrrggggh!
I worked in an emergency vet for a couple of years and I saw just about everything you mentioned except the dystocia with the puppies/kittens. We were in a poor section and dystocia was pretty much an instant euthanasia. Hairballs have never bothered me but I absolutely can not stand any eye trauma. I can’t even look at it without getting physically ill. One of the vets I worked with mentioned that it was a female thing or something but I just know that I was lucky enough to never be in a position were I HAD to assist with an eye trauma. The others were kind enough to let me sit them out lol
I have worked in emergency full or part time in pretty much all my 25 years as a CVT. I also hated working with eyes and anything with maggots, but once you become the most experienced one on the shift you find yourself stuck dealing with these things and you cope. And when I say “stuck dealing with it”, I mean literally stuck because everyone else bailed, I remember once taking an animal in the treatment room and being followed by the rest of the staff on duty, looking at the animal and saying “Eww, maggots!” then looking up again to see no one else in the room. Dang they were quick! I did get desensitized to these things eventually but I still go “Eww!” and cringe but nothing gets me gagging like a hairball. I don’t get it either, it’s a physical thing I can’t seem to control. The other things are more disgusting but the hairball is my Kryptonite.
Never dealt with dystocia in cats or dogs, but plenty in goats and sheep. It usually doesn’t bother me when I’m in the thick of it, because I’m usually trying desperately to sort out leg + leg…does that leg go to…wha? is that a liver? while pulling out handfuls of innards. And decomp is a smell that stays with you a while. The hairball thing, though, does trigger my gag reflex, too. Maybe it’s the sound that really gets to you.
I don’t know what’s up with our cat lately, maybe shedding of her winter (hah Florida, short haired tabby) coat. She is throwing up everywhere. I cringe when I hear her starting in on one. I’d almost puke myself trying to clean them up during this last pregnancy. Lately it seems I’m either changing diapers (2 kids) or cleaning up after the cat! I of course also find those wet spots on the floor in the middle of the night, and it’s like ‘EWWWW!’ or the older kid goes ‘kitty…mess…’ She did try and help clean up a spot I hadn’t seen the other day.
Maybe it’s time for different food and a bath, or just change the carpeting to a lovely shade of dark tan.