By: Dr. Alison Pollard
On December 18th, Provincial SPCA officers called to tell us they had a kitten in need of medical assistance and were rushing him over to see us. When they arrived, we met Rudy!
Rudy was approximately 12 weeks old but he had already met with some very bad luck. Both hind feet and his tail had been severely traumatized. A good samaritan had found him and tried her best to nurse him back to health, but unfortunately his injuries were too severe for simple bandages to fix.
As Rudy purred and sang, I un-bandaged his right hind foot… and it wasn’t there. The injuries had been so severe that it had come off. His left hind foot was still attached but his toes were hard, dry pieces of tissue that were not alive. Same for his tail: the last 3cm was not going to make it.
He was such a brave little kitten and so happy. We all knew we could help him. Seanagh (our technician) and Carrie (our assistant) immediately anesthetized him. I performed surgery on his left hind foot to save the large pad and remainder of his foot, but his toes had to be amputated. Since his right hind was already gone, I cleaned the wound to allow it to heal completely. I also amputated the last 3cm of his tail.
Rudy woke up quickly and smoothly from surgery and seemed very thankful for the care he received! He lived with us at the clinic for 2 weeks until his wounds were healed. During that time, he wormed his way into all our hearts and he even found himself a home with our customer service representative, Colleen!
Rudy has been doing great. He manages to motor around chasing his brother-cat, Romeo. He may need some padding constructed for his right foot with has a little callus, but that is a work-in-progress for us all as we try to make him as comfortable and “normal” as possible. All in all, Rudy was our Christmas miracle and he couldn’t be happier!