Angel is my gentle and very sweet 4 1/2 year old baby. She is a beautiful long-haired white domestic pussycat. Angel is a feral rescue (born outside) who has been with me since she was about 3 months old.
When I brought her into our home it was never our intention to keep her (we had three previous feral resuces living with us). Not because she wasn't a heartbreaker from the start, but we felt three cats was already a handfull. I could not find her a home in our small community, so I was on a waiting list for a shelter spot (the only one within 60 miles of our town). The weeks became months and I was not able to get her into the shelter, they were and always are at maximum capacity. Before we knew it, it was time for her to be spayed, she had stolen our hearts and became part of our family.
Cue forward, four years, our home is now turned over to more kittens and cats than I care to mention. This can and usually will create it's own set of probems. Cats are very territorial and occasionally fights will break out. In my personal research about Cat Behaviour most advice that I found was to let the situation play out and not to intefer, which I generally followed. Any spats that happened in my presence were over as fast as they began and they were so infrequent that I really was never too concerned. My opinion and future response to any sort of altercation has changed 360 degrees.
I hope that by sharing this very emotional and personal journey that Angel and I have been thru over the past several weeks will open your eyes and give you pause for thought. I would hate to think that another family would have to live thru this experience.
Because Angel is basically a loner and I have witnessed very little aggression towards her, I was totally unprepared for what transpired next.
I'll never forget the Saturday, early August when I looked down and Angel was sitting at my feet while I was watching TV. She was just quietly sitting there looking up at me and had she not smelled so bad, I would not of even known she was there. The poor thing, she was just covered in diarrhea. I can tell you it was no fun cleaning her up.
I don't know if you have ever tried to wash a cat's bottom, but it takes a great deal of dexterity. She was not a happy camper, but she is so gentle that she only gave me a pitiful meow. At the time, I missed that she had an open wound fractions from her anal area and she was letting me know that she was in pain. I was just happy to have been able to clean her up. I dried her off and because she has had diarrhea problems in the past, gave the situation no more thought.
The following morning, when I was checking her to make sure that she had no more diarrhea, I found a small amount of blood and she would not let me touch her rump, she let out a wimper of pain. Murphy's Law, it was a long weekend in Ontario (Canada) and our vet's office was closed on the Monday. Unfortunately, our small community does not have emercency service, we are forced to drive approximately two hours to the nearest Emercency Animal Hospital. I honestly thought that I was dealing with a diarrhea problem so I didn't panic when the first available appointment wasn't until Wednesday. Angel's regular vet was on holidays so she would be seeing a new doctor.
What I discovered was not only surprising, it was shocking. Angel had an open wound fractions away from her anal opening about the size of a quarter. It was very deep and full of blood and feces. Because is was so close to her anal opening and was clearly abcessed and infected she had no way of eliminating her bowel movement (poop). The Vet stated that he had never seen anything like this before, but the only way that she could have a wound like this was from a cat bite. The bite had obviously abcessed and then burst.
When cats get into fights they bite and their sharp teeth leave puncture holes. These puncture holes virtually disappear within several hours trapping bacterial which multiply at an alarming rate. If the bite is noticed right away then a roud of anti-biotics will usually restore your cat to good health.
I was totally upset, as I did not even know that she had been in fight, let alone received such a vicious bite from one of the other cats in the house. A cat bight can go from bad to worse in a very short period of time, usually only a couple of days, and obviously this is what happened in Angels case. Because the wound was so close to her anal opening it could not be stitched. The only course of action that the Vet had to offer was to clean her out, and put her on a strong regime of anti-biotics and pain killers and hope for the best.
I brought Angel home, kept her isolated from the other cats and prayed. She really had a rough couple of days, especially when the pain medication was finished. Vets typically do not like to administer more that three days in a row of Anafen, as it can be very hard on cats. At the end of the two weeks of anti-biotics Angel was showing signs of improvement, she still had an open wound but it looked like it was getting better and she was going stir crazy isolated from the rest of the household.
I let her join the family, but everytime I tried to find her she was hiding under something and she was just not interacting like her ususal self. A couple of days passed and I just couldn't find her, she was definatley not feeling well. She was regressing and she had blood again near her anal opening. The Vet didn't even want to see her, he just refilled her antibiotic and pain pill prescription and told me to continue on the same course of action for two more weeks. Alarm bells went off, but my hands were tied, as Angels regular Vet was still on holidays. To make things more complicated, her regular Vet is a large animal doctor and only sees small animals on Saturdays.
Things were not going well for Angel, she was discharging puss and blood and was just looking at me with those big beautiful eyes begging me to help her. As she was isolated again with us in our bedroom, my washing machine never stopped, I needed to keep everythings as sterile as possible to avoid futhter problems with such an open wound.
Finally, after almost a week of no improvement I had had enough. On Wednesday morning after a very, very difficult and long night I called the Vet's office. Angel must have visited her litter box every 5 minutes trying to have a bowel movement, with no results. She was straining so hard, and was in a great deal of pain.
Here is where Kismet, the Power of the Universe, Luck, Prayer, call it what you may, was on our side. The attending Vet to this point was on vacation and Angel's regular Vet was covering. As soon as he heard what was happening he told me to get her to the hospital and he saw her immediately.
It did not take him long to assess that Angel was in real trouble. She needed immediate surgery and he wasn't sure that the results were going to be positive. As the wound was so close to the anal opening, it was continually filling up with feces and she did not have the muscle strenght to eliminate on her own. She was so badly infected, the wound was so close to her anal opening and because it had gone on so long, he had no way of knowing if her tissues had been damaged. He prepared me for the fact that she might not survive the surgery or that if he did not find enough tissue to rebuild her entire anal opening that I would have to make a decision to let her go on the operating table. The only other option that we had was for him to rebuild a whole new opening, but Angel's quality of life would have been totally unfair, as she would have no control over her elimination functions.
Cue panic and tears, I don't even know how I drove myself home. I called my husband to rush home from work as we may have to make the decision to let her go. I can tell you that I cried a bucket of tears, I paced relentlessly and I bargained with the higher powers of the universe to get Angel thru this. I remember vividly, the sound of the phone when it rang a couple of hours later, bracing myself. I cried even more tears as I listened to the results....please bookmark ....to be continued....
Angels Mommy
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