It wasn’t poop *or* vomit!

If that’s just not the most enticing title for an entry, then I don’t know what is.

On Saturday, Derek the cat (aka “Lumpy"), was having a hard time trying to climb to the top of the tall cat tree in the living room.  He struggled and struggled with the final jump to the top, and Flippy and I teased him about having to haul such a heavy load.  When he finally got settled up top though, something about him seemed “wrong”.  He hadn’t made any noise, but he had a look on his face as if he was in pain, and he turned to face the wall rather than facing outwards to keep an eye on everything.  I got up to check on him and he refused to look at me, but when I held up a snack, he merrily ate it as if there was no problem.  I figured that meant everything was okay, and that maybe he’d pulled a muscle or something during his climb.  Later in the evening he came down to sniff the food dishes but didn’t really eat, but I again assumed it was just some minor issue from earlier.

On Sunday morning I got up to check on Derek and he was wandering around, being his normal self, so I thought all was well until Flippy noticed weird brown marks on the carpeting.  “Skid marks!” we both cried, but on closer inspection it just wasn’t poopy-looking but seemed to be more like blood.  I cleaned up marks on the carpet and the sofa, and then I went to check out Derek and he had brownish ick all over his butt.  Ewww.  I washed him off and all I could see was a small bald mark on his rear leg—it almost looked like a rug burn.  I couldn’t think that a rug burn would make him bleed like that, and couldn’t figure out where the blood had come from.  I then found the final clue—a towel on Derek’s favourite sleeping chair had big, wet, brown stains on it.  Being the brilliant detectives we are, we decided that Derek wasn’t feeling well after his climbing accident, he’d eaten, he’d vomited, and he’d sat in it.  In our minds, he’d then dragged his butt around on the carpet to try to clean himself up.  The only problem with this theory was that the stain had a weird odor, something unlike poop or blood or vomit or any other bodily fluid I’d dealt with.

Cut to today, when we took Derek to the vet for a urinalysis to make sure the crystals in his urine were dissolving on the Urinary SO food.  The vet looked him over and I mentioned in passing that he’d hurt himself and that his back end was still a bit dirty (soap and water hadn’t removed all the crusty bits).  I said that while it has originally looked like a rug burn, I now thought it looked more like a ruptured blister.  The vet picked him up, took one look at the back of his thigh, and said, “Abcessed cat bite”.  Again I say, Ewwww!  We have no idea when Derek was bitten, or even who bit him, because we haven’t had any cat fights in recent memory.  The vet pointed out that a bite on the back of the thigh probably meant Derek was trying to run away (or in his case, waddle away).  It turns out that what I thought was poop, then blood, then vomit, was really a ruptured abcess.... ewwww!  I finally know what the officers mean on “Animal Cops” when they say that a dog with an infection has “a smell”.

It was very lucky that we already had the vet appointment today, because even after I’d cleaned the wound up with soap and water, I still thought it was some sort of rug burn!  I don’t know how long it would have taken me to figure out it was an infected bite wound, or how bad the infection would have become by that time.  As it is, the infection is literally a quarter of an inch deep—just a big, open pocket of nastiness.  I have to clean the wound out with Chlorhexiderm Flush, and I don’t mind except Derek now has a perpetually soggy rear end.  I also have to give him antibiotics, and we’re all still recovering from the The Curious Incident of the Cat Poop in the Night-Time so I’m a bit nervous.  This time he’s getting Baytril, which isn’t supposed to cause diarrhea, but you know Derek.  He’s so hard to pill, too—he’s got a great gag reflex (and I don’t mean he’s got great comedic timing).

If you’re queasy, don’t click the next link, because I have a photo of Derek’s wound, post-cleaning.  I just think it’s unbelievable, yet it doesn’t seem to cause him any pain:

abcess.jpg

Frank was at the vet today too (yes, it was fun being in the car with both of them!), because he needed yet another in his series of vaccinations.  I haven’t had a “kitten” in so many years that I forgot how many shots they have to get, and even though Frank isn’t a kitten, we’re treating him as if he’s never had any immunizations before.  Not one to avoid drama, on the weekend I was giving Frank a little shoulder rub and I found a small lump between his shoulder blades.  I don’t know where I’d read about injection site sarcomas but that immediately sprung to mind, and it worried me a bit.  I showed the spot to the vet today, she felt it, and I’m to keep an eye on it and to bring him in immediately if the lump gets larger.  Also, if it hasn’t gone away in three months, he’s to go back in for a biopsy.  It’s no larger than a grain of rice right now, but it concerns me.  I’m so in love with Frankie McFrankenstein that I want nothing more than 20+ years of good health and happiness for him, and really hope the lump fades away long before we get to a biopsy stage.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/22 at 07:32 PM

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  1. Poor Derek!  That was great timing on the vet appointment.  Who would have thought that he was sporting an abcess that large!  I hope that he is on the road to recovery now.

    Injection site sarcomas.  That is an interesting topic.  We just had a lump removed from our JRT’s hind leg.  The vet was not sure what it was (it was not cancerous, thank goodness), but my husband was thinking that it was located at the site of her previous set of shots.  I will have to do some research on that.

    Posted by Expat  on  08/23  at  01:16 PM

  2. Derek’s abcess is still pretty nasty today and is “leaking”, ugh.  Hopefully in a couple of days the antibiotics will take hold and the wound will start to heal.  Derek is accepting sympathy cards as long as they contain some sort of fish.

    Injection site sarcomas and granulomas seem to be sort of common, yet I don’t think I’ve ever read much about them.  A Google search sure turns up a lot of information, though.

    I’m glad your JRT is okay—was it the left leg or the right leg?

    Posted by Mudpuppy (aka Leigh-Ann)  on  08/23  at  02:59 PM

  3. Darn that I just sent my last fish flavoured sympathy card in the mail last week.  I do have a mouse scented card though.  Does Derek like mice?  smile

    It was the JRT’s right hind leg.  I remember that her shots were injected in that area before we moved here.  I really wonder if the fluid just never absorbed into her body.  Before we had the lump removed, the vet aspirated it.  She said that the fluid turned crystalline as soon as it hit the slide.  Weird.

    I hope that Derek is doing a little better today!

    Posted by Expat  on  08/24  at  02:42 PM

  4. Derek actually is doing a bit better today, but I’m not his favourite person right now.  I’m the person who grabs him, cleans up his sore leg, and then shoves a pill down his throat.  For some reason, he never seems to enjoy it!

    I’m glad your JRT problem was just a scare and turned out okay.  I’d never noticed that vets gave injections in particular locations to keep track of trouble areas, so I’ve learned something because of Frank’s lump.  There’s no reason a qualified vet would have ever given him an immunization right between his shoulder blades, so hopefully the lump is nothing.  I sort of wondered if it could be his microchip, but the vet didn’t mention that, and I’m not sure how large a microchip is.

    Posted by Mudpuppy (aka Leigh-Ann)  on  08/24  at  08:30 PM

  5. Wow, that is a classic!  Actually, my sister was just telling me about a very similar story involving one of her workmate’s cat ... he is very fluffy and she knew something was going on “back there” but he was too sore to let her see.  So, she squatted down behind him with a flashlight while he was eating.  She took him to the vet and found out he had an abcessed anal gland.  She didn’t even know cats had anal glands!

    Thanks for reading my blog and especially for blogrolling me.  I have gotten a lot of traffic from your site.  Recently I have been reading your blog and enjoying it.

    BTW a microchip is about as big as a long grain rice kernel.  If your pet ever has a chest radiograph taken you’ll see it.

    Posted by DrJenn  on  09/03  at  04:24 PM

  6. Ah, Derek had anal gland problems a few months ago, but I think we finally got that straightened out.  He’s got a perpetually dirty butt because he’s too fat to reach it to keep it clean, but at one point it was just a little too dirty to be normal.  So, we had his anal glands cleaned and it helped the problem a lot. 

    Frank still has his lump between his shoulder blades… I guess we’ll have to go get that looked at pretty soon.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann (aka Mudpuppy)  on  09/10  at  09:42 PM

  7. hi! I was just looking for some information about cat abcess. I found your site. Thanks so much for explaining. My indoor/outdoor cat isn’t a fighting cat, but somehow they like to push her around. I now need to teach her to stay inside. smile Take Care and hope your cat is doing ok now. smile

    Posted by kate  on  01/12  at  08:41 AM
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