31/07/2025
🥳 PET OF THE MONTH - JULY 🥳
⚠WARNING - GRAPHIC IMAGES OF SURGERY⚠
Meet Kit Kat, she is a lovely 1 year old domestic short haired cat. Kit Kat had a very unfortunate accident after moving house which resulted in her falling from the 4th floor of a building, she sustained a severe fracture of her right hind leg - breaking both her tibia and fibula. She initially presented at our out of hours provider where she had x-rays taken and was given strong pain relief.
We rarely carry out fracture repairs at our practice as they are usually carried out at specialists, however we are always happy to help in special circumstances if deemed possible and it was arranged that a couple of our experienced vets would carry out the fracture repair in house. The risk being that if the surgery did not go well that Kit Kat would require her leg to be amputated - an outcome we were determined to try to avoid.
Kit Kat was transferred to us and we kept her comfortable by continuing strong pain relief whilst we ordered the necessary additional equipment such as a fracture repair plates and whilst we ensured we were fully prepared for her operation. Such a sweet girl she was still purring and very tolerant of our patient checks despite still being in some pain. 💕
Her operation, albeit quite tricky, went well and this was confirmed with post-op x-rays, our main aim was to stabilise the larger tibia bone. In the photos we have both pre and post operation photos.
We try our best efforts to keep our patients warm whilst under anaesthetic with various heat sources and special reflector bedding however with having her leg exposed and being such a small patient Kit Kat was hypothermic on recovery. This was soon corrected with continued warming devices and she recovered well from her anaesthetic.
Pain management was very important to us with this case as we want our patients to feel as comfortable as possible. We provided pain relief with a concoction of various drugs - pre operation she had methadone, a nerve block and an anti-inflammatory. Post operation she was understandably still very sore and we gave her a top up of methadone, a small amount of ketamine and a drug named gabapentin.
Kit Kat's recovery went so well she was amazingly able to be discharged from us to go home the very next day. She was very bright and purry, eating well and was happier to move around now that her leg felt more stable. She went home on the instructions of strict cage rest for six weeks and continued medications.
As her operation was at the beginning of this month we have since been able to have several post operation checks with her and are very pleased with how her recovery is going 🐈⬛❤️
