Traffic accident

Looking very poorly and having fluids

This poor chap was hit by a car either Wednesday evening or early Thursday morning. Luckily one of our clinic clients spotted him and knew the clinic was open so she could rush him straight down.  Although he looks very pathetic and sorry for himself in this photo there is a happy ending as his family phoned round and traced where he had been taken for treatment.

Before we knew he was owned I made up a donation page on JustGiving to raise funds towards his treatment. If you would like to donate to help ensure that we can provide treatment to the next injured animal, please visit http://www.justgiving.com/ditto

Two injured cats taken in

These cats were taken in as the result of two separate road accidents. One is a middle-aged neutered male, who has a broken jaw, but we hope no more serious injuries, the other is a young female who has been recently spayed as a shaved area is still visible. She has a broken pelvis, but the vets think she will not need a repair operation although she will need at least six weeks confined to a cage to reduce stress on the damaged bone. If you think either of them may be your cat, please contact us or phone the emergency vets where they are being cared for on 0845 500 4247.

Busy, busy

Jake, the little terrier, is doing well and should be fit to go out to a foster home tomorrow. He'll need cage rest with toilet breaks very strictly on a lead to stop him running or jumping and dislodging the metal plates that are holding his pelvis together. Back to the Vet School for X-Ray in a month. 

Luke, the tom cat with a broken jaw, is also well enough to go out and we'll probably move him down to the kennels as there's no reason to restrict him to a cage. He's also not yet neutered (because the vets were anxious about the legality of doing it before we've had him for at least 7 days) which means he's a bit of an anti-social guest for a foster home due to the strong tom-cat smell.

Just after half-past 8 this morning the emergency vet phoned to say they'd got another traffic accident needing to be transferred to our clinic, so our volunteer clinic manager cut her poor dog's morning walk and zoomed down to do the move before closing. This cat has chest injuries - basically the air-tight seal which normally makes your lungs expand when your ribs move has been breached so that there's a leak, making the cat breathless. The initial news on this one is that the School vets think it can be managed by medical treatment rather than needing any operation.

Maisie

This is Maisie, the cat with the broken jaw who came in just over two weeks ago, still looking a bit sorry for herself. As you can see from the pics, the left-hand side of her face is still not quite right, but she should be able to have the metal wire out next week. I think she's almost blind on the bad side except that her pupil contracts in bright light, so she can probably see light and shade.

Updates on Santa and Joshua

Unfortunately Joshua had quite a serious setback last week, due to slippage of the repair to his pelvis, which caused constriction of his pelvic canal, making it impossible for him to pass faeces normally. This means he's back in the Vet School and has had another operation to put the pelvis back and create what's known as a "false joint" to stabilise his damaged hip, which had dislocated again.

They've just phoned to say it looks reasonable so far and he's now more comfortable.

Better news on Santa, who had another operation to close his collar wound last week, and so far it looks as if the skin graft has taken. He's not out of the woods yet, as it could still break down again, and we won't know for sure for another two weeks.

Another cat

Not very full details yet as Vet24 phoned immediately after the finders had brought the kitty to them. The cat is all (or almost all) white and about four or five years old. No collar or chip, and I don't think they'd definitely confirmed the sex, although they spoke about "him" which suggests they think this is a neutered male. He's apparently fairly bright, but has a probable pelvic fracture, so "the other Rosemary" is going to pick him up from them early tomorrow morning on her way in to do reception at the clinic.

Injured stray dog

Not completely sure whether this was the result of miscommunication, lack of money or just general snafu. The 24 hour vet phoned last night to say someone had brought in an injured stray: probably from one of the local Traveller sites and probably hit by a car. The dog warden service normally only works 9-5, so I wasn't surprised to be asked if we'd help with funds for initial treatment. I asked the vets to contact the local dog warden service first thing in the hope that they'd be able to help with further costs, or at least provide transport to our clinic.

They did try, but were told South Cambs no longer has a dog warden service, which is very bad news if true. Their website still gives contact numbers, so this may just be temporary, or it may be that they simply don't have any funding to deal with injured dogs. By then all the volunteer drivers who might have helped with transport were otherwise occupied, so I asked the vet to use the pet taxi service to send the dog to the clinic to give him at least a chance rather than simply having him put down there and then.

More cats again, and updates

Another traffic accident via Cathedral vets in Ely (dislocated hip, which they will probably pin there to avoid the need to transfer to the Vet School, then to the kennels) and another entire tom with septic fight wounds admitted at Pet Drs in Soham — fortunately testing FIV/FeLV negative.

The cat admitted to the Vet School hospital last week has had his pelvis plated and can walk fairly normally, but he still can't urinate without help. They think this is a temporary problem which will go away as the pelvic bruising heals up. He's not terribly happy in the hospital because it's very noisy and strange, so ideally we'd get him out to a foster home where he could get more peace and quiet, but it's difficult because it needs to be someone who's willing to be trained to express his bladder manually until he gets back normal muscle control.

Spirit, the blocked bladder kitty has been castrated and is FIV/FeLV negative and seems to be passing urine with no problems, so Nicola's planning to move him to the kennels tomorrow.

Sunday evening panic

Modern surgical techniques make some absolutely remarkable repairs possible, even where the main bones of a limb have been broken in several places so that they effectively hang loose. For really bad cases, the vets will usually implant a "surgical fixator" - effectively a metal scaffolding bonded to the pieces of bone to hold them rigidly in position so that they can grow back together. The result looks fearsome, but seems to completely relieve the pain of the break. In the accompanying photo Tiger Lily demonstrates how unworried she is by the fixator holding her upper forelimb together.

The downside is the length of time needed for bone to grow back between the broken sections. This can take several months, and until the natural join is complete it's essential that the animal doesn't put sudden strain on the leg by jumping or falling and the fixator has to stay in place (it's removed by a second operation once X-rays show natural bone growth has filled in the gaps).

This means the animal has to be closely confined and only exercised under strict supervision and various sorts of cages have to be used, none of which are entirely satisfactory. The large plastic cages sold for indoor rabbit-keeping are easy to clean and free of snags on which the fixator can get hooked up, but they are rather hot in sunny weather. Fibre-glass or plastic indoor kennels and dog crates are preferable in many ways but the bars can be a problem - as one of our fosterers discovered on Sunday when his foster-cat managed to slip his fixator through the cage bars, and panic, turn sideways and get completely wedged. It then required two of us to release him, one to rotate the cat and the other to slide the fixator through the bars. Not entirely my idea of a fun Sunday night.

Cats and more cats

Our poor driver had a wasted journey this morning. A member of the public had found a stray cat which was "walking funny" and believed to have been hit by a car. As it was after 9 at night, he was asked to take the cat to Vet24 for first aid, with a view to transfer to the clinic in the morning. Unfortunately the cat had other ideas, and on arrival at the vet, he shot up a tree and vanished into the night, before actually reaching the surgery. However, as the vet said, he most likely didn't have any fractures if he could move that fast.

Second stray of the day was a badly matted, un-neutered cat. This is the time of year when tom cats wander in search of females and they often come to grief. This little chap is just a bit battered and should do fine. He turns out to be negative for both Feline Leukaemia (FeLV) and Feline Immunodeficiency virus (FIV): a huge relief. 

Which brings us to the dreaded topic of the Seven Days. Lots of people will tell you that the RSPCA  puts stray animals to sleep automatically after 7 days. This is NOT TRUE, but like many myths, there is a small amount of fact at base. Healthy animals and animals who can be treated so that they can have a reasonable quality of life stay with us until they find a home (the only exception is animals who are actually dangerous). We normally wait until at least 7 days are up before offering them for rehoming, to give their original owner the chance to reclaim them. 

Some animals are clearly so badly hurt and suffering that there is no choice other than euthanasia almost at once. The major difficulty is animals who are less severe cases, but are clearly not going to get better or have a reasonable chance of getting a home. Some of those (end stage kidney disease is an instance) might live happily for a few weeks or months more if they could be reunited with their original home, but it really isn't fair to keep them in cattery conditions. Feline Leukaemia is a nasty and ultimately fatal disease, but a caring owner might nurse a leukaemic cat successfully for some time. In these sorts of cases we'll normally keep the animal for seven days in case the owner turns up, but effectively we'll already have made the decision that euthanasia is realistically the only possible option.

Lost Cats

In this hot weather there's a high risk of cats being shut in sheds etc., so it's advisable to start asking neighbours to check sheds, garages etc. (anywhere that a cat might go in for a nap and get shut in) if a cat doesn't check in at normal mealtimes. Also ring round local vets in case he might have been injured and handed in. It's best to start this as soon as a cat's been away for longer than his normal habit.

Vet24 at Milton do most of the out of hours emergency cover for the Cambridge area, so it's particularly important to phone them as they're the most likely vet for an injured cat to be taken to over the weekend or evenings. Their phone number is 0845 500 4247. Injured cats reported to the RSPCA will normally be taken to the closest available private vet for initial first aid.

The Blue Cross cats home on Garlic Row would be the most likely place for an uninjured stray to be taken if found in Cambridge City. Their number is 01223 350 153.

It's also as well to get a missing cat logged  with the RSPCA National Control Centre (NCC). Their number is 0300 1234 999.

Heart sink time

Sometimes things go wrong. Our rehoming co-ordinator and I had a series of increasingly agitated calls over the weekend from family members of an elderly lady whose cat failed to come home on Friday evening. They sent out search parties and a neighbour told them that "an RSPCA van" had taken the cat away.

Our inspectors and ACO's definitely do not spend their lives roaming round Cambridgeshire kidnapping people's cats: someone must have made a call to say that the cat was an ill or injured stray. That wouldn't be a problem - the family themselves were realistic that the cat is very old and someone might think he was a thin stray. What is a problem is that nobody seems to be able to trace where the cat was taken. We (the branch) haven't had a request from an inspector or ACO to take the cat in for boarding and none of the local vets has contacted us to ask for funding for continuing treatment (assuming the cat looked bad enough to see a vet).

What is supposed to happen in these cases is that the paid staff member who collects an injured or sick animal takes it to the closest available vet and arranges for the National RSPCA to be invoiced for initial first aid (usually referred to as IET = Initial Emergency Treatment). Once that's happened, the vet is supposed to phone the local branch (me, in this case) to arrange for us to pay for the cost of continuing treatment and/or transfer to boarding facilities.

It tends to be this final step that breaks down, because each individual vet only deals with RSPCA cases relatively infrequently. So, they tend not to remember what they're intended to do, and vets using their initiative, with all the best intentions, can lead to situations you'd rather not get into. The most common failing is that no-one in the practice contacts anyone (because they assume we'll have been told the cat's been taken to them), with the result that the animal has apparently been "disappeared". Understandably this looks to the owner as if we've either got the cat and are refusing to say where it is; have lost it, or (worst of all), put it to sleep without giving them a chance to claim it.

Another traffic accident

A four-year old cat with probable dislocated hip. Owners say they have no money at all, so they're signing him over to us for rehoming. He's currently at Isle vets on the far side of Ely, which will mean an early morning start for our long-suffering transport volunteer, if she's going to pick him up and get him to our clinic by the 10.30 deadline for admissions tomorrow.

Pelvic fracture

Call from Vet24 yesterday to let me know one of our inspectors had brought in an injured cat for initial first aid treatment. They'd assessed the cat and think he's got a fractured pelvis and possible leg injuries. Bladder and bowel working OK, so no likely spinal injury, thank goodness.

Today is a clinic day, so one of our volunteer drivers can pick him up this morning and drop him off for further treatment.