A couple weeks ago, a woman called in
about a kitten that she either needed to get rid of or put to sleep.
He was born with deformed back legs, and the way he was walking was
making open sores on the walking surface. We discussed it for a while
among the staff, and decided to simply take the kitten, even if it
meant euthanizing him ourselves, just to make sure it got done.
So
the kitten came in, and sure enough, his little hind feet were way
off. The foot was actually twisted completely around so that the paw
pads were facing up. And the hock was permanantly bent such that he
was walking on the outside corner of the hock. This lady had been
letting this kitten OUTSIDE, where he had to bounce down 4 wooden
steps to get to the gravel, dirt, and what-have-you that typically
makes up trailer park yards. He had open, infected wounds on both
hocks.
Well, the playful little guy stole our hearts in about
an hour, and we decided to try to save him. First thing was to get
those open wounds healed up and get some radiographs to see what was
going on in there to make plans for future surgery. To make a long
story a little less long, he had his surgery today.
The tibia never grew. It was the size of
a little leg bone in a newborn kitten. The fibula, which is the other
bone in that part of the leg, grew normally. Since both ends of both
bones are attached in the same joint, the only way the fibula could
grow was in a circle. It also pushed the tarsal bones out kinda
sideways, and dislocated the end of the tibia. So basically, what
they did was amputate the foot at the end of the tibia, and cut the
fibula off as close to the knee joint as possible. The purpose of
leaving the long stumps being to retain the nice big callouses he had
developed there for walking purposes. In addition, we are going to
try to fashion an orthopedic shoe/bootie type device, if he'll keep
them on.
The surgery itself went well, but they used more
drugs to keep him down than they did on the Boston Terrier we took
down yesterday for a dental! In addition, when he woke up, he threw a
4 hour tantrum, re-opening one of his incisions, and bleeding all
over the damn place. They had to sedate him AGAIN to put in
additional sutures. When he woke up from that, he resumed his
tantrum, and finally one of the techs resorted to simply packing him
around for the rest of the day, and keeping him mellowed out on
opiates. They told us they wanted someone to take him home tonight
and keep an eye on him, drugging him as neccessary, and I'm elected!
So now he's here, and the drugs are
wearing off and I can't give him another dose until 10:00. He was
screaming bloody murder for a while, but finally seems to have
settled down again. I didn't really expect him to eat, but offered
him some canned food anyway, he ate it, and settled right in for a
nap. He's so darn cute. He sleeps propped up in a corner of the cage
on top of his stuffed animal, recliner style, with all four feet (or
what remain of them) pointed up. It's sad, I know he's only laying
that way because his little stumps hurt, but it's still cute.