injured cats

Broken Baby

/ Re-Farmer / 15 Comments

This morning, while doing my morning rounds, the kitties all came out to say hello.

Then I saw Ginger.

Walking on three legs.

His right front leg was dangling and swinging in a most unfortunate way.

I tried to go to him, but he “ran” away. I didn’t want to risk losing track of him or hurting him more, so I went inside. My younger daughter was handy, so I told her about it, and she went outside with the cat carrier to try and catch him, while I called the vet clinic.

The doctor was in surgery at the time, so we were told to bring him in for 3pm. My daughter had caught Ginger, and we had a few hours, so we set him up in the sun room, where he would be safe and we could check on him through the bathroom window.

It was encouraging to see that he had jumped up onto the swing bench to nap in a sun spot. Also, his injured leg is not visible in the photo. He’s lying on that shoulder.

I had hopes that it might not be too bad. After all, he wouldn’t be lying on the injury if it was really bad, right?

So we brought him to the vet and my daughter went in, because she can wear a mask. She texted me updates whenever she was able. At first, the doctor thought there might be a dislocation, but they had to sedate him to take x-rays. He is the friendlier of the litter, but he’s not fully socialized, by any means, so it took a bit longer for them to examine him.

What the x-rays revealed was a badly broken elbow. What the doctor thought was a dislocation was a broken bone, sitting on top of another bone.

Not only was it a very bad break, but in a very bad spot.

We were presented with two options. One was a surgical repair. The last time the doctor had gone that route, it ended up costing $2200. The other option was amputation. My daughter texted me while they looked up the cost of that, but my immediate reaction was that an amputation would be far less traumatic.

For the amputation, we got two estimates. Which it would be depends on if it takes 2 or 3 hours to amputate, and how difficult things turn out to be. The price range was just over $1300, to just over $2000.

Ouch.

At that point, they woke him up to give him more pain killers so we could take him home and talk about it. Once in the vehicle, my daughter was able to give me more information. The surgical repair is something they couldn’t even be sure would work, largely due to the placement of the break and how bad it is.

Oh, and we did ask what they thought might have caused the injury. He clearly had not been in any sort of fight. They think it was most likely a really bad fall. :-(

The problem isn’t deciding what action to take, but how to pay for it. Even the money set aside for the garden soil and the emergency fund together would cover the lower amount, but that would screw us over for all our gardening, repair and maintenance plans over the summer. I don’t think I’ll even tell my family about it. Their response would be to have him put down – and not necessarily having the vet do it, for the gun owners.

We’re not going to do that.

In fact, what we’re likely going to do is have him fixed and, after the surgery, turn him into an indoor cat.

Hopefully, the vet will let us make monthly payments. However, I have also done something I have had quite a few people recommend I do over the past several years. I’m loath to do it, but for the kitties, I will.

You may have noticed a new button at the top of the column on the right. We now have a donation page set up with Ko-fi. Anyone who would like to support taking care of the kitties can click and donate any amount they wish.

Currently, I’ve got a fundraising goal of $1300. If it costs more, we should be able to cover it. If we raise more than the goal, it will go towards getting Ginger fixed so we can bring him inside. My older daughter tells me she’s planning to open up to more commissions to raise funds, too. There are only so many she can take at the same time, though.

Tomorrow, we call the vet back and talk about setting up the amputation and payment options. Until then, we’ve set up the sun room for Ginger’s convalescence, and he is there now. In fact, my daughter just have him the first of the treat flavoured painkillers we brought home with him, which he is to get every 24 hours.

Because the swing bench is a favourite place for the cats to nap, we moved it around and set up “stairs” for him to use, so he doesn’t have to jump up onto it, as he had in the earlier photo I took.

The poor broken baby! He’s being remarkably calm and stoic about the whole thing.

Pretty soon, we might have to consider changing his name from Ginger to Tripod! ;-)

The Re-Farmer

The Potato is done!

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

Finally! We got Potato Beetle to the vet today.

When I did my rounds this morning, I did let him out of the sun room. I figured it would be good for him to stretch his legs and … do things. (The litter we had for him looked unused, but that plant pot was knocked over again…) He followed along as I did my rounds, but wasn’t looking to happy about things, so I carried him back and closed him up in the sun room again. The fur around his wound was looking damp, but I couldn’t tell if that was from him licking it, or if the wound was seeping.

Shortly before we headed out, I got him into the carrier and brought him into the house.

Which had the other cats VERY interested! He didn’t make a sound, though, and just sat there.

Cabbages and Beep Beep would have been familiar smelling cats. He might not remember Susan, Two-Face, Cheddar, David or Keith, though. Or Fenrir; when she showed up here, he was one of the kittens among the two litters that absorbed her into the family.

He wasn’t too happy with the car ride to the vet. The vibrations from gravel road in particular seems to spook him. My daughter took him in while I waited in the car (I have no idea if the vet honours mask exemptions, and I really didn’t want to deal with it if they didn’t). He was given a thorough examination, the wound was shaved and cleaned, he got a rabies shot, just in case Nicky the Nose (the only cat that we’ve seen that would do this to him) is infected, plus the slow release anti-biotic. Overall, he checked out well. Since he is willing to stay in the sun room, we will be keeping him indoors for a little while. If possible, we are to keep the wound clean with a damp cloth, but that’s it.

He is now back in the sun room and seems content.

Even with the wound shaved, it’s hard to see in the photo! When the light hits it, though, you can see that it is bright, bright red.

We’re expected to get some colder overnight temperatures coming up, and while he’s got a cozy set up in the sun room, we decided to dig out the light attached to a board that my brother used under the kitchen sink, to help keep the pipes from freezing when the house was empty over the winter (the kitchen has no heat running to it, so it was the one vulnerable spot). We later used it to keep the water bowl from freezing when we had the sun room set up as winter shelter for the cats. I switched out the light bulb for the spare ceramic terrarium heat bulb. It’s now set up facing the food and water bowls, and the nearby box nest we made for him. It’ll be just enough to keep the edge off in a small area, but that’s all he’ll need. We could probably do nothing at all; while we are at -8C/18F outside, the sun room is above 10C/50F. His little box nest would be even warmer. But we have the means to safely give him some warmth, so why not?

I’m glad that he checked out okay. Plus, it cost much less than we expected, which is bonus. We’re so used to the high cost of getting a cat fixed, it seems weird that other services they provide cost so much less! The main thing is that he’s healing up nicely, and is doing well. That’s a relief! :-)

In other things, I updated yesterday’s post about the pressure canner my sister in law found for us. Click on the link for more details, but the short version is, even though it was in the canning section and being sold as a canner, when she checked the instructions, there was nothing about how to use it for canning! We’re going to keep it, anyhow. It will be used! Meanwhile, we’ll still keep our eyes out for a pressure canner that is affordable. It’s not a big deal if we don’t get it this year, but we will eventually need one.

Getting a chainsaw is higher on the priority list right now. ;-)

The Re-Farmer

We’re melting! Plus, vet trip arranged

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Oh, my goodness! It is so incredibly warm out there right now!

The Weather Network app on my desktop has not been working well with our intermittent internet connection, and often will not update at all, but the weather app that came with my computer seems to get through better. (Even while writing a post, I’ll get the red bar across the top, telling me the autosave didn’t work because I have no internet, several times before I’m done!) Between those two on my desktop, plus the one on my phone, we have three different forecasts at the same time. :-D They would be linked to different weather stations. None of them tell me which weather station they are linked to. Ah, well. They tend to be close it enough, it doesn’t matter too much.

We have all sorts of melt happening right now! This is the diverter from our rain barrel; it’s mostly full and frozen right now, so I’m not letting the melt go into it for now. I did empty it in the fall, so all the water in it – minus what I was able to bail out several times over this winter – is from when things got warm enough to melt. A demonstration of how, in spite of the polar vortex we’ve been under for the past few weeks, this has been a very mild winter!

While doing my rounds I, of course, checked on the yard cats. Nosy’s eyes are still leaky, but they are more open. He’s spending much of his time in the cat house, with the white cat with calico markings. I was looking through old files and confirmed that she is Rosentrantz’s baby. I have some photos and video from last spring of her and her orange sibling, being groomed by Rosencrantz, outside the pump shack. We never saw her orange sibling again, and have no idea what happened to it. I am just sort of assuming this cat is also a female, but we really have no idea. She runs off too quickly.

It was Potato Beetle I most wanted to check out. He had looked really messed up, just a few days ago, and had blood on his fur at his back legs, but we weren’t able to see where he was hurt. Yesterday, I saw him and, while he was moving around better than before, he was still messed up. Plus, there seemed to be some (frozen) bloody mucus on his fur on a back leg. I tried to see where it came from and thought there might have been some swelling inside a back leg, but he wouldn’t let me get a better look.

This morning, when he came out for food and water, I was happy to see he seemed to be moving normally again. He was eating with good appetite, and followed me around as I continued my rounds. He even let me pick him up and carry him, at the same time as Butterscotch. When I got back to the house, I was able to put Butterscotch down and try and get a look at Potato Beetle’s back legs and belly. I saw no sign of injury or swelling. There was no longer any dried blood, either. So I put him down and watched as he went into the kibble house.

When is when I saw the matted fur on his hip. I tried to get a closer look, and found it was a wound. My touching the area obviously was uncomfortable and he moved away, but I was able to see the fur was matted with blood and getting into the wound. I am guessing this is from a bite. It’s not a clean wound, like the gash we found on Butterscotch, but a messy hole. From what I can see, he just needs to be cleaned up and will likely need a stitch. Getting him on an antibiotic would be good, too. He would probably be fine if we did nothing at all, but… why take the chance?

So… time to dip into the emergency funds and take him to the vet. Thank God we actually have emergency funds! Before moving out here, we would never have been able to set money aside for any sort of contingency fund or savings. It’s amazing what a different not paying cash for rent makes, even if we have much higher expenses in other areas. :-)

I am going to my mother’s to help her with shopping today, so we will be bringing him in tomorrow afternoon. I’ve already called the vet to arrange it. At least Potato is one of the more socialized cats and will not be a problem to catch. I should still probably close him up in the sun room when I do my morning rounds tomorrow, just to make sure he’s in the area when it’s time to get him into the carrier.

Meanwhile, all the cats seem to be really enjoying these warmer temperatures! Including Potato Beetle with his injury. The younger cats are very rambunctious, playing in the snow and wrestling. They are such fun to watch!

The Re-Farmer