Happy Pets

In a case of serious accident, when professional attention is urgently required, do not stop to clean up a wound, unless a piece of glass or other object is easily removed, but concentrate instead on stemming bleeding. Scratches and minor lacerations should be cleaned with a salt solution or dilute hydrogen peroxide, never with strong antiseptics made for humans; they could irritate the tissues and actually delay healing and may interfere with any antibiotics. If you can get a wound treated by the vet within a day it is probably better not to cover it.

Bleeding

Pressure directly on a wound, either with the hand or using a pad of cloth, will help stem bleeding. On a limb the wound could be covered with a layer of lint or gauze, then a pad of cotton wool, and tightly bandaged from the foot upwards.

In serious cases a tourniquet can be applied between the wound and the body to reduce arterial blood reaching it from the heart. A handkerchief will serve. Knot it around the limb or tail, push a pencil or similar object through the knot and twist it to tighten the grip. A tourniquet must be loosened at intervals of not more than fifteen minutes, for to cut off the blood supply for longer could lead to gangrene and other problems.

Sometimes a blow may cause bleeding beneath the skin without breaking its surface, producing a blood blister or haematoma. In minor cases it may be sufficient to apply a cold compress to reduce the swelling, but in bad ones the vet may need to drain the blister or even cut the skin away for healing. If the cat is scratching the swelling (and haematomas on the ear are often the result of persistent scratching because of an ear infection) cover the area with a dry dressing or, in the case of ears, fit an Elizabethan collar (see below).

Bandages

Most cats do not much like bandages and try to pull them off, so they must be securely fixed. Your vet probably will not expect you to replace dressings, for doing so himself will provide an opportunity to check the condition of the wound. In any case, if the cat manages to get a professionally applied bandage off it is unlikely that an amateur attempt will stay on better. However, to deal with emergencies and to keep the cat from worrying wounds if it does manage to get a bandage off, here is what you should do.

The equipment in the human medicine chest will serve, with the tubular bandages designed for fingers and thumbs being especially useful on feline feet. Do not, however, use already treated dressings which may include antiseptics harmful to cats.

Always bandage as smoothly and flatly as possible, without using knots, and bandage over a wider area than the wound itself: even if it is quite a small area of the head or body it will be necessary to wrap the whole to keep the bandages secure. On the head, for example, start below the chin, carry the bandage over the head in front of one ear and behind the other, back under the chin and then round again as necessary. If you have a wider bandage take it over the top of the head, cutting a hole for the ears to poke through.

Secure the finished bandage with sticking plaster, and if you want it to stay on for some time tape all the edges to the fur. This is always more secure than tying knots in the conventional way. To bandage an ear itself you need to bandage front and back of it, then pad the ear on either side with plenty of cotton wool and secure it to the bandages by covering all with sticky tape.

You can bandage the body by wrapping it vertically and then carrying one end of the roll back to the tail and around its base, where it can be secured. Alternatively use a piece of cloth, cut holes for the limbs if it is to extend that far and snip the side edges into vertical strips. Then you can pop the feet through the holes, draw the cloth up the sides of the cat and tie the strips to each other along the spine.

To bandage a paw, start by padding between the toes with small pieces of cotton wadding and a larger one under the pad, then bring a bandage down from above the wound, over the end of the paw and back up the leg. Wrap the bandage in a spiral downwards and back up again spiralling the opposite way. A tubular bandage is much easier: slide it over the limb, fold the bottom end back over the paw and secure with sticky tape, then secure the top end to the fur. A tail can be bandaged like a paw but along its whole length, securing it at the base with sticking plaster and then covering the whole with tape.

Bootees made from tubular bandage and taped over the paws are useful to stop a cat from scratching at a wound or trying to tear a bandage off. To protect the head from scratching, or to stop the cat from biting at bandages, you will have to go one stage further and make the cat an Elizabethan collar. Cut a circle about 12 in (30 cm) in diameter from some thick but flexible card. Cut out a big hole in the centre about 4 in (10 cm) across and then chop out an arc slightly more than a quarter of the circle. Make some holes at equal distances down each side of the two edges where you cut the arc away and put pieces of sticking plaster around the edge of the inner circle to soften it. Now wrap the contraption around the cat’s neck and thread a lace or piece of string through the holes to pull it into a funnel shape. Adjust for fit if necessary, stand back and hope for the best.

If you are lucky you may not have to go to all this trouble, for these collars are now being made in plastic or fibreglass to fit on the cat’s own collar. They are more cat-proof than card, so it is worth putting up with their one disadvantage — if the cat scratches away at them all night they make a dreadful noise!

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 5:52 am and is filed under Cats, Collars, Health, Kennels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.