We usually don’t want to talk about bad things when we know they are about to happen, or when they are happening, but then can open up about them after the fact. This post is one of those times, and the ‘bad thing’ was our little cat Emi (aka. ‘Hopping Toad’) finally losing the rest of her half-missing leg.
I will caution you that this post is comprehensive and detailed, and as such contains some unpleasant images.
Here’s a famous photo of Emi taken over a year ago:
As you may recall this is how we got her. That thing on the lower right we called her ‘stump’, and it was the approximately 70% of her leg that remained after a still-unknown incident that occurred when she was a baby kitten. So she was 3.5 legged, but happy and energetic and to be honest not really any different from a four-legged cat, including in the mobility stakes.
But she would occasionally ‘stump herself’, which meant she’d try to use her stump as a real leg and hit it on things. This would sometimes create little sores on the end, which would take a long time to heal. Here’s a photo of one such sore:
That tiny little thing on the tip may not look like much, and they often were not, but eventually – about 3 or 4 months ago now – one of them got bigger and bigger and eventually became infected. The advice of the vet was that this would continue to happen since her leg had never been correctly amputated, and suggested we finally have the operation done.
For various reasons we decided she would not have the complete operation, and agreed to a partial amputation with the hope of removing any sharp bone, infected skin and basically giving her stump more of a ‘muscle buffer’ to prevent it happening again. The operation was a success and we then had a recuperating cat on our hands. This was (very!) difficult for us. We had to separate her, keep an eye on her, and keep a collar on her (we would dub this ‘her hat’) to keep her from getting at her stitches. Here’s a shot of her first collar:
Unfortunately she got to her stitches and bit a few out. This meant we had to increase our vigilance, and during this period I would spend long hours in our bedroom both writing my PhD dissertation and keeping an eye on Emi. It was stressful and difficult. Here’s what my ‘office’ at the time looked like:
We had upgraded Emi to different collars to reduce her ability to bother her stitches. During this healing period she had also become fevered and wasn’t eating or drinking. Little toad was in a bad state and we were very worried. We gave her medicine and tried various foods. She also had a fluid injection and gradually became better. The alternate collars worked to keep her from her incision as well, even if she hated wearing them. This one was inflatable and had a bell on it. We used to put this one (which seriously curtained her movement) on her when we couldn’t watch her:
Here’s how her stitches looked at this time:
Nasty aren’t they? Because of this she had them in longer than scheduled, although our attention coupled with the collars and the medication meant the vet eventually thought they could be removed and did so. The healing was far from over though (the area was still a bit raw) and she was still collared. However she could at least rejoin the family. She’d been wearing the collar for almost a month by this point, and had upgraded to a smaller and more fashionable (but very effective) model:
She was mostly herself in this period, which meant her activities were more or less normal. She would, for instance, climb her cat tree in this collar, or sit in our laps as we watched TV.
Unfortunately, although the stitches were out the incision simply wasn’t healing, and eventually became infected again. Off she went back to the vet, and this time we decided it was time to have the full amputation as originally recommended. Obviously, our stress and worry about our little toad was not ready to pass yet.
So she had the complete surgery, and it went very well. Everything was removed to the hip. Here’s she is at the vet’s, immediately post-operation:
And here she is the next day at home, showing off her surprisingly large incision:
She still looks a bit drugged in that shot 🙂
The second healing period went tremendously better than the first. She almost never bothered her stitches, which healed quickly and cleanly, and she never became fevered or refused to eat. In fact she was surprisingly active from almost the day after, as if the operation had not occurred and she wasn’t actually now missing a major part of her body. She seemed as happy as ever:
After about a month the stitches were out, but she had to continue to wear the hat a bit longer while the incision finished healing. Last weekend we removed the hat for good, and today her incision is all but undetectable and she is running around like a mad little thing playing with her sisters and doing happy cat things. The (complete) lack of the leg has no affect on her mobility, and is probably (as the vet told us all along) a good thing since she’ll never ‘stump herself’ ever again.
Here’s her official Christmas photo, which I took just 5 minutes ago:
And here’s Toad’s Christmas message to all of her fans:
I’m all better now! Thanks for thinking about me everyone 🙂
All our prayers were heard!!