Marble’s big day out….

Say hello to Marble, a very much loved 1.5 year-old cat who visited us last month after going missing for five days. He normally doesn’t stray too far, but his mum and dad had recently moved house and he must have wanted to explore his new neighbourhood!

When he came in for examination it was clear something wasn’t right, there were lots of scratches all over his body and he didn’t want to use his right forelimb. His nails were scuffed and damaged on his left side and his right forelimb had a painful swelling at the midpoint of his humerus. Marble’s owner agreed that x-rays were required to establish if there was a fracture and to enable us to plan how best to repair the fracture. Marble was admitted to the hospital and immediately received pain relief whilst awaiting his x-rays.

That afternoon Marble was sedated to allow us to get the required views of his humerus which showed he had indeed broken it badly. The fracture is described as a ‘displaced comminuted distal diaphysial fracture of the humerus’, this means that the break was in lots of bits and they had all moved away from each other towards the bottom of the mid part of the bone. Based on these, findings with all the scrapes and scratches too, we strongly suspected Marble had been hit by a car!

This isn’t a simple fracture to repair and with the possible age of the fracture we were keen to explore all the options quickly. The owners faced a difficult decision, referral to an orthopaedic surgeon to try and fix the humerus or we could offer an amputation. The owners made the difficult decision to amputate Marble’s leg as this was the likely quickest option for him and cats can do remarkably well with three legs!

Surgery was performed the next day to remove the whole of the limb including the scapula (shoulder blade). Marble recovered amazingly well, although he didn’t enjoy his surgical pet shirt to stop him interfering with his wound.

He was discharged the day after his surgery and had to be confined to a single room to allow his wound to heal and whilst he got used to only using three legs. He came back in for postoperative checks 3 and 10 days after surgery. His wounds had healed perfectly, and he was given the green light to take his surgical suit off which he was very pleased with!

Marble was remarkably lucky to get home to his mum and dad and despite enjoying having such a lovely friendly boy in the hospital we are all so happy he is back at home where he belongs. Road traffic accidents are unfortunately fairly common with cats, so it’s always worth bearing in mind that there may be cats roaming around when driving in residental areas.

Marble is back to going outdoors again, but just in the day time, and he comes in at night time now. This is always a big decision for us as owners, but for most cats it is a huge part of their quality of life, and they can still have a really happy and active outdoor lifestyle even with three legs. Marble is very much proof of this!