A tiny wound that gets worse and worse
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Unfortunate feline Thong is once again hospitalized and his pal Thep is not a happy cat
POOR THONG. Just a month after suffering a bad bout of flu and a few weeks after a nasty fall on his rear end, the unlucky cat is back at the clinic, this time with an injury.
It’s a tiny puncture wound on his tummy, perhaps from a sharp claw of another cat. The little hole has healed, but underneath, there’s an “angry” swelling.
I did notice that for a few days the boy didn’t seem very well, but I worried that he was suffering from flu.
With a cat or a dog, the first indication of illness is that your pet is eating less than normal – or has stopped eating entirely.
Thong, a soi boy who considers my home his personal hotel, had, in fact, begun to pick at his food. At first, I thought that someone else on the soi had started to feed him, but Thep, his best friend, still had a good appetite. Since the two boys usually eat together, if one had found a new restaurant, the other would have shared in the feast.
So I worried about the flu, but I didn’t see him sneeze or cough. Then, this morning, I find him sleeping upstairs. He wakes when he sees me, then rolls over on his back, his favourite position when he sees me.
With his abdomen exposed, I see the problem immediately, that puncture wound, and the swelling underneath. I can feel the pus (the fluid) moving around in the swelling. The healed puncture wound has prevented the injury underneath from healing, and pus, full of dangerous bacteria, has formed.
“No problem,” I think. “The vet can take out all that pus.” She can “aspirate” it, or remove it with a special needle.
I can’t do it by myself. I suppose I could sterilise a pin and use it to pierce the swelling and press out the pus, but it’s unlikely that Thong would let me. At close to six kilos, the boy is strong and doesn’t take pain quietly.
Besides, I might accidentally push the pus deeper into Thong’s body, where it could cause terrible infections in his organs.
At the vet’s, though, we find the pus cannot be removed. The abscess is much larger than we thought. Although one part is soft, the rest is hard. Thong’s body has formed a hard capsule around the pus, an immune response that prevents the pus from entering other parts of the body. This capsule also prevents the vet from removing it with a needle.
She decides to wait a few days, when the abscess should soften up enough. Meanwhile, Thong has to stay at the clinic for medication and observation.
After three days, however, the abscess is still too hard. The vet tells me that we could wait, but since the abscess is softening so slowly, she’s begun to worry that there might be some other problem.
Yes, just like humans, cats and dogs, even males, can get breast cancer.
Thong has his surgery to remove the abscess that very day. The good news is that, when she cut him open, the vet didn’t find any evidence of cancerous growths. The bad news is that the abscess – and the surgical wound – are even larger than she thought.
Poor Thong must stay at the clinic for seven days, to allow the massive wound to heal. That little puncture wound just keeps on getting worse.
He’s unhappy, but not as unhappy as Thep, who comes constantly into the house looking for his friend. At first, he waits quietly, but by the third day, he begins calling.
“Where are you? Where are you?” he cries sadly. “I don’t want to be alone.”
