Joey’s Pet of the Week – Hello Mr President! !

By Scott Lackenby | Dated February 8, 2017

Hey everyone!  How are you all? What a change in the weather, hey?!? It’s certainly nice to be able to go outside and not have your paws melt! But the hot weather is just around the corner, so at the risk of sounding like a broken record, be sure to take extra care of us animals when the weather heats up again. It’s been a good week here at GVH. It was Nurse Emma’s birthday, so that meant there was cake! And not just any cake. ICE CREAM CAKE!!! It really is my absolute fave of all the cakes. I was allowed just a small taste, which is ever so kind of the humans….

Mr star this week is the handsome Mr President, a 7year old white moggy cat from Gordon. Mr President was brought in by his Mum to see Dr Sam Lackenby after he came inside with blood coming from a wound on his foot. On examination, Dr Sam discovered that Mr President had managed to cut not only his skin, but his tendons as well! Mr President was admitted for an anaesthetic to have a better look at his wound. Before having the anaesthetic, Dr Sam took some blood from Mr P. A pre-anaesthetic blood test is a great way to make sure that we are super dooper healthy before we have an anaesthetic. Some of the markers for healthy kidney function were slightly higher than normal in Mr P, so he would need to give us a urine sample so we could do some further investigation. In the meantime, Mr P was started on some IV fluids and Dr Sam took a quick Xray to make sure Mr P hadn’t managed to fracture any bones during his adventure. Lucky for him, the Xray was all good.

Next, Nurse Janie gave Mr P’s foot a good clean. It’s super important that we get all the dirt and yukky stuff out before we stitch up. Dr Sam also cleaned inside Mr P’s wound. Once it was all nice and clean, Dr Sam could reconnect Mr P’s tendons and muscles before suturing up the skin wound. Once this was all done, a special splint was placed on Mr P’s leg. This was to help support his leg while everything was healing and to stop him from putting too much pressure on it. This splint would need to stay on for 2-4weeks, depending on how it was healing, and Mr P would need a bandage change twice a week. Mr P was about to become a regular fixture at GVH with all of these visits! The good news was, a repeat blood test the day after surgery showed his kidney function markers were back to a normal level. Mr P was discharged with a cone of shame, pain medication, antibiotics and strict instructions to take it easy.

Mr P came back not long after going home. It seemed he wasn’t too happy about the cone of shame or the leg splint. He had a bit of a freak out at home, jumped on a window sill and had managed to get the bandage off his leg and move his splint. Mr President had to be sedated to have it all put back in place. He was sent home with a reinforced cone of shame, a confinement cage, sedatives, and told again to take it easy.

The next day, Mr President was really not a happy cat. His Mum was worried about him so it was decided that he should convalesce with us. It took Mr P a number of days to be happy with us. It probably didn’t help that he was having pills shoved down his throat twice a day. So he was swapped to injectable medication and that seemed to help him like the GVH humans a little more. He wasn’t eating the food his Mum had brought in for him, but would eat cooked chicken, (I think I’m going to go on a hunger strike to see if I get fed cooked chicken…..),  but by the time he was ok to go home, Mr P had become an affectionate pussy cat. The splint still needs to stay on, but he is much happier about it all now. Hopefully Mr President avoids whatever misadventure caused his injury in the future!!

Well, better go. It’s almost time for another nap, I mean, it’s time to do some work…. Meows for now, love Joey xox