My poor kitty…

Today’s “Favorite Kitty Pic Friday” post is not labeled as such because I wouldn’t call this a favorite picture.  I did, however, want to share with you what my day consisted of yesterday, and since it involved Jasper, I figured it could just replace it this week.  There will be pictures in this post, and Favorite Kitty Pic Friday will resume normally next week.  Just a warning – this post may be a little graphic in my description of things, depending on what bothers you and what you think is graphic.

One of Jasper’s favorite places to be lately is the couch/sofa.  He either is snuggled up on a blanket right next to me or sleeping on the back of the farther end of the sofa.  Yesterday he decided to snooze there…and then the rest of the day began.

He was sleeping away on the back of the sofa while I was sitting here watching TV and browsing the internet, when all of a sudden he jumped, spazzed out, and landed himself on the window sill trapping himself between both layers of curtain.  I was certainly surprised and yelled out.  I didn’t think to check him right away because my kitties have little freak outs all the time.  Hubby came down right away because he heard me yell out, and asked what happened.  As I was telling him, he was checking the sofa for holes and managed to find this:

 His entire claw!  Well, then I began to panic and asked hubby to retrieve him off the window.  I was checking his feet for where the claw came off, and found it right away – he was bleeding very badly… 

I grabbed a tissue right away to try to clean him up, and saw that he had nothing left where his claw should be.  I never dealt with this before, and luckily I had the vets number within arm’s reach.  I covered his toe with the tissue and called the vet immediately.  After explaining what happened to the tech (I think he started to roll off the sofa while he was asleep and woke up scared) and figuring out that he tore off the nail completely, leaving the quick/nerve ending exposed, she said we didn’t have to bring him in because they would only do what she was telling me to do.  I had to quickly grab some cornstarch to apply to the wound to stop the bleeding, then try to bandage him up at least until today or so to keep the area clean and covered so he wouldn’t lick it.  We only have to call them back and bring him in if the toe/foot starts to look infected, otherwise, just keep it clean and let it heal.

So, I bought my first set of baby socks yesterday…for my cat.  Have you ever tried to bandage a cat’s limb before?  Not fun.  And as a former Athletic Trainer, I have some skills bandaging wounds, but a cat – totally different and a lot harder.  Luckily I do have these skills though, because otherwise we would really have had a problem and would have needed to take him to the vet.

Here he is after getting all wrapped up the second time – lounging on his second favorite area of the couch.  After the first time we wrapped him up, we put him in the carrier until I could run out for more bandaging supplies and socks.  When we let him out of there, he had already managed to start to unravel the first wrapping, so we re-did it and put the sock on him all the way up past his joint, hoping it would stay on better that way.  It did for just a little while.  Pretty soon he kicked it straight off his whole foot!  The vet tech said we needed to keep it covered though, so we tried again…and again.  I lost count now how many times we tried until we gave up for overnight since we wouldn’t be able to stop him from flinging it off anyway.

 

 

 

This is him lounging in hubby’s lap after one final try at bandaging.  (And yes – we still have our tree, along with all our other Christmas decorations up.  I was stressed and busy before the holidays, and have been taking it easy since.  Maybe we’ll work on that this weekend…)  He looks so defeated.  He was very unhappy with the whole thing, and every step he took he tried kicking off the bandaging.  I felt so bad for my fur baby, I even bought him a special treat for dinner last night.  Which made me realize I am going to have one spoiled child when he/she is sick!  So, he managed to kick off the sock and bandaging one last time shortly before bedtime, and we gave up at that point because we couldn’t do a lot while we were sleeping anyway.  He did lick at it, we tried to stop him, he slept on the bed with us most of the night, and seems his normal lazy self today.  Other than the fact that he doesn’t like when I touch his foot to try to check on the toe.  I will need hubby’s help for that since we might have to clean it up today.  Hopefully he heals well and fast, and we won’t end up having to make a trip to the vet!

In other news, I ordered a fetal heartbeat doppler earlier this week, and it should arrive today!  We were very torn about ordering it, because we have been so nervous this whole pregnancy to begin with, and not being able to find the baby’s HB with it may make us worry more.  So, hopefully we have luck with it, and it will help us to feel more at ease.  Have a great weekend!