posted 08-16-2003 08:29 PM           

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I slammed a door on my cat's tail by accident last tues/wed, and i feel HORRIBLE. The door caught the tip of her tail which began to bleed. I tried my best to put pressure on the area and took her to the vet as soon as was possible, which was 8 hours later. The vet couldn't see any bone and bandaged her tail. 3 days later (today) was the check-up on and change the bandages. Her wound hasn't healed at all and started bleeding right when the bandages came off and the vet could see a bit of the end bone this time. The vet told me that I would have to decide to either have her tail partially amputated or have the wound stitched up (possible chance it would be too tight and cut off blood circulation in that area and fall off).

I know that this is an unfortunately common accident among cats and their careless owners and that amputation has not affected other cat amputees. I would like to know if anyone has had any experience like this, as I'm not sure what to decide. I'm not comfortable with amputation as the ONLY answer.

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Member

Posts: 996
From:sheridan, wy
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 08-16-2003 08:41 PM         

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Try stitching the wound and see what happens. Sounds like the worst case scenario is that the end of the tail would fall off on its own. Cats tails are pretty good at healing. I have seen a lot of cats with slightly crooked but perfectly healthy tails from being shut in doors. And if you do have to amputate the end, I'm sure it wont bother the cat as long as she gets pain killers for awhile.

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