Little Lord Fauntleroy

If looks could kill…

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After a week of Clavamox, Scampi’s rear leg abrasions aren’t any better.  In fact, they’re worse, because what started as just one leg has now spread to both.  I really had no option but to try the e-collar the vet recommended, as it will let us know if Scampi is injuring himself (say, by over-grooming).  I’m pretty skeptical about that as the culprit, because we’re with him all the time and we don’t see him do any excessive grooming, but I knew I had to give the collar a try.  It unfortunately turned Scampi into the clumsiest, saddest, most depressed and confused kitten on the planet.  He bumped into things, he walked backwards and tried to run away from it, and he eventually just plunked himself down in one spot and looked unfortunate.

He had the collar on for about eight hours, and as I was getting ready to give the cats their final feeding, I noticed Scampi wandering back and forth from one litterbox to another.  He’d try to stand on his hind legs as if to jump inside (the boxes are quite deep), but then he’d stop and walk away.  I took the collar off him and he immediately jumped in a box and peed a river, so I think the collar had kept him from being able to jump.  He usually jumps with his hind legs, grabs the edge of the litterbox with his front legs, and then jumps down in, but with the collar his front legs couldn’t grab onto the edge of the box.  I was worried he’d end up having litterbox “issues” if he felt he couldn’t get into the box, so I just took the collar off and our experiment lasted all of one-third of a day.

I sent him off to bed after rubbing one of his legs with ItchStick.  It’s a medicated, waxy stick (like deodorant), and it contains witch hazel, aloe vera, and lidocaine, plus a bittering agent to keep pets from chewing on their wounds.  I saw Scampi take a lick of it and he seemed quite disgusted, so hopefully this stuff will remind him to leave his leg alone, while encouraging healing.  I’ll try it on just one leg for about three days, and if there’s improvement, I’ll continue.  If there’s no improvement, I guess he’ll be back to the vet for a skin scraping.  I wish I could post photos of what his legs look like, but I’d have to hold him still to do that, and he wouldn’t like it.  So there.

Sigh… I hope the problem doesn’t turn out to be some sort of allergy.  I wouldn’t even know where to begin figuring out what he was allergic to, and if it ended up being dust mites, well, he’d just have to learn to live in a plastic bubble.

One positive thing came of his course of Clavamox—his gooey eyes cleared up.  He’d had a yellowish discharge from his eyes for a couple of months, but his eyes were clear nad not irritated, and the vet didn’t think it was anything to be concerned about.  Whatever it was, it went away instantly with the Clavamox and hasn’t come back, so that’s one less thing to worry about.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 09/06 at 11:55 PM

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  1. Poor Scampi! Did the vet do a skin scraping? If it’s a bacterial skin infection, like staph (although it doesn’t sound like staph, but Cats Are Different) it will need a fairly long course of specific antibiotic to clear up, usually Cephalexin.
    Hope you get it under control, poor kitty must be miserable. :(

    Posted by Carina  on  09/07  at  03:31 AM

  2. I cannot get over how handsome he is! Hope his legs improve.

    Posted by Helena  on  09/07  at  07:30 AM

  3. Is that how cats normally wear their e-collars?  With dogs it’s usually turned up toward their heads so they really can’t lick anything.  Maybe if it were turned up like the usual dog-style, he’d be able to get in the litterbox more easily?

    Posted by kabbage  on  09/08  at  09:35 AM

  4. Consider this photo a “variation on a theme”—when the collar was worn inverted over his head, he was completely immobilized.  We figured this version might work, because it still kept him from reaching his rear legs, but it ended up being bad in a different way.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  09/08  at  11:40 AM

  5. Harley was the same way when he had to wear “the collar of shame” after I shut his tail in the door last March. He was so depressed having to wear it. Jaxsun and Francesca just pointed and laughed at him as they knew the shame and anger of having to wear one also. You’d think they’d be more understanding about it…but that’s what siblings are for, right?

    Posted by Nio  on  09/08  at  04:32 PM
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