Barnie is a nearly two-year old handsome Russian Blue cat who got himself in a bit of a scrape a few months ago. His owners were unable to find him one evening and when they eventually traced him to a neighbour’s garden he was reluctant to walk. He appeared to be sore on his right hind leg and had also passed some bloody urine. His owners brought him down to us on our emergency service to have him checked out.
When we examined Barnie he was very lame and indeed very painful when we touched around his right hip and pelvis. The rest of his legs seemed to be unaffected and thankfully he did not appear to have any other injuries. In fact he was remarkably bright! We were suspicious that Barnie had been hit by a car around his back end, although it was possible he had fallen or something else had happened. Barnie was admitted into the hospital, given pain medication and monitored closely for the remainder of the night to ensure nothing new developed.
The next morning Barnie had passed some normal faeces and some blood tinged urine. He was generally much more comfortable on the pain relief. We were confident that Barnie was unlikely to have any further compromising injuries and so we sedated him to further examine his hind-limb injuries and check on his bladder.
X-rays confirmed that Barnie had unfortunately suffered two fractures. One was at the bottom of his right femur (thigh bone) and the other involved the right hip joint. Thankfully his bladder was intact. Due to the complicated nature of the fractures Barnie had suffered he was referred to an orthopaedic specialist to have them fixed.
Barnie had surgery two days later to fix the fractures using pins, plates and wires. We saw him back here at Hollybank ten days later to take out his sutures. His skin wounds had healed really well. Barnie had some pain relief and had to stay in a cage at home to ensure he rested properly and allowed the fractures to heal.
Four weeks later we saw Barnie back and took repeat x-rays to monitor how well his fractures were healing. We sent them to be looked at by the orthopaedic surgeons who had operated on him and they were really pleased with his progress.
Barnie was glad to hear he could get out of his cage! He was not yet allowed to roam free however and had to spend another six weeks on room, and then house, arrest!
Barnie is now back to his normal lively self and appears none the worse for his injuries!
