<p>Sorry to use the board like this, but figured if people can ask for plumbers etc. - anyway, our 10 year old indoor cat’s tail is suddenly limp, and we cannot figure out why or what this means, and we’re not in our home city - meaning that we have no local vet, and it’s the weekend.</p>
<p>I was thinking about taking him to the 24 hour emergency animal hospital, and wondered if that make sense, or if it was safe to wait until Monday morning to call up a local vet. He’s eating normally and does not appear to be in pain, and is walking and jumping onto D’s (very high) bed quite normally. But his tail is clearly limp, and he’s somewhat less energetic than usual.</p>
<p>I looked all over the internet and it seems the cause is either a break, or a disc problem. We cannot figure out how he could have possibly broken his tail, considering there’s no way he got it caught in a door or anything. D’s apartment isn’t that big and doesn’t even have that many opportunities for him to get hurt. And he’s ALWAYS inside. </p>
<p>Any thoughts? Should I spring for the 24 hour emergency animal hospital? And - I’m not sure I’m ready to hear it, but, just in case someone knows, what is the cure for either a broken tail or a disc problem?</p>
<p>If it were my cat, I’d watch carefully and figure I could go to the emergency vet later if the cat stoppped eating, appeared to be in pain, wasn’t peeing/pooping, etc. You can always call the emergency vet and ask them.</p>
<p>I think you need to call your vet at home. They usually have an emergency number for weekends. Or you could just call the emergency vet where you are. What if he had a stroke or something?</p>
<p>I’ve had two dogs with “broken” tails–on xray it was essentially a pulling of the first disc of tail from body (not sure if that makes sense). Never knew what caused either one of them. Both dogs exhibited limp tails, but also had pain if the tail was manipulated, also had trouble moving bowels as they couldn’t lift their tails properly. These “breaks” both healed in time and vet gave them nonsteroidals for pain. I would probably call the emergency vet—with 8 animals, I have done this several times and they have been good to tell me what could wait and what needed to be immediately seen in order to determine seriousness of condition.</p>
<p>Thanks Weenie - we left a message on the answering service of our home vet a few hours ago. No return call so far. We only go there once a year for updated shots so don’t really have anything like a “relationship”. We called the emergency animal hospital here and got the standard “we cannot say unless we see the cat”. </p>
<p>Meredes, thanks for the link. I did try it and even got registered but then they trigger you to pay before answering a question - I’m willing to pay $$$$ for a vet’s office but not quite willing to pay for something over the internet. (The requirement to pay isn’t obvious until you type a question, then you’re prompted to register, then once registered you get the validation email; once you click the link in email you get the prompt to pay.)</p>
<p>DMD I guess that’s what we’ll do - I sure hate being so worried though, not knowing what’s wrong. I brought this cat home ten years ago as a stray kitten and he’s never been sick, and it’s bothering me a lot. All our books on cat care are back in our home and the information on the internet is either scary or just not very useful.</p>
<p>I am not a vet – nor do I play one on TV – but I answer questions like this all the time at work! My generic answer is that if you are concerned about your animal, he needs to go to the vet.</p>
<p>My sense is that I would wait until Monday morning and see your regular vet (or other local vet that’s not the ER). I base this on – he doesn’t seem to be in pain, he is eating, walking and jumping normally.</p>
<p>Emergency care is horrendously expensive – and if he is not in distress it should be safe to wait. OTOH, if you see changes in behavior that indicate distress or pain, then you should go NOW. </p>
<p>For tonight, I would find the phone number of the local animal ER. You could always call them and find out what it would cost to be seen – and whether it’s more for Saturday night or if Sunday afternoon would be more reasonably priced for a quick look-see. You might get a phone answer from them – but their generic answer is usually along the lines of “if you are concerned enough to call, the cat needs to be seen as soon as possible”.</p>
<p>We’ve just been through a similar ordeal. Cat started favoring one leg out of the blue. By the next day, wouldn’t put any weight on the leg and hopped around three legged.</p>
<p>Of course, this was over Memorial Day weekend. Took it to the vet on Tuesday. The cat had been bitten…probably by another cat. Not a particularly bad wound, but it’s like a dirty hypodermic. The bite wound heals over and infection beneath the skin causes an painful absess. Accompanied by fever, listlessness, and loss of appetite. Basically a staph infection. </p>
<p>Treatment is anti-biotics and draining the wound, which all sounds much easier than it is. At one point, I considered asking the vet to put ME to sleep.</p>
<p>EDIT: Nevermind. I missed the “indoor cat” part!</p>
<p>mkm, sorry, we had a cross post, is it logical to you that an indoor cat could break his tail? How long did it take for your dog’s tails to heal?</p>
<p>It took about 2 weeks for the beagle and more like 3-4 for the lab. Such strange injuries–it’s not like we have little kids pulling on tails. I don’t know about the cat being indoors, since we never really knew what did it to the dogs.</p>
<p>mkm thanks very much for that - how did you find that so fast? Based on what I can see and not being a vet it’s a Group one situation - painful tail head. It doesn’t say though what the cure is, but, it’s good to know that recovery percentages even in the other categories are very high. </p>
<p>cnp I thought about what you posted and called the emergency vet again. Price is $300 no matter what. D is off to a party with teammates, so I told her to leverage her contacts - someone she knows must know someone, who in turn knows someone who can recommend a good vet here locally and hopefully also that vet is sensitive to college student budgets, and to little animals who shouldn’t have to wait until Monday for relief. Maybe even someone has direct experience with cats. After all it’s her future alumni network and she should be able to access the resource. </p>
<p>ID, I totally empathize. It’s absolutely driving me insane to watch this poor cat not be his usual kittenish, playful self. In some ways it’s worse that when a child is sick because at least a child can articulate pain. The cat is sleeping right now but I cannot tell if he is in much pain or not, or even where it might hurt. He isn’t meowing and I don’t know how to assess his comfort level.</p>
<p>I looked at the site that MKM posted … and I didn’t see treatment mentioned? One issue is going to be the bladder control thing. Is the cat urinating normally? This may be one of those things for which there <em>is</em> no treatment. Oops …this is what’s going on, he’s gonna get better eventually. </p>
<p>FWIW, my experience with cats is that if they hurt or are uncomfortable there will be some overt signs – like wandering around howling!</p>
<p>To deal with the abscess infection, the vet put two pieces of butcher’s twine right through its upper leg, each tied off in a circle. These strings acted as wicks to drain the infection. At least in theory.</p>
<p>Our job was to put a hot compress washcloth on the leg three times daily (yeah, right…cat’s love hot compresses!), followed by tugging each loop of string a half inch – through the cat’s leg and it takes a good yank – to keep it from scabbing over and preventing drainage. Follow that up by swabbing each entry point with a q-tip and hydrogen peroxide. Sounds great on paper, but you try getting a cat to sit still for that. Oh, yeah, antibiotics orally from a medicine dropper twice daily. And, tranquilizers ground up in baby food from a syringe before each attempt at pulling the strings. Just shoot me now.</p>
<p>There was the night we tried the tranqulizers in cat food, but the wrong cat hopped up on the counter and ate it. Then, I manage to spray baby food/tranquilizer mixture all over the kitchen walls from the syringe. Followed by the cat absolutely refusing to let us touch the strings despite 2 tranqulizer pills (we started the week trying a 1/2 pill dose). </p>
<p>The strings came out last Monday, followed by another week of antibiotics. Vet figured there was a 33% chance the infection and abscess would return without drainage, but the drain strings were just not a viable option. Minor localized swelling, but it appears that we’ve dodged a bullet.</p>
<p>ID, that is just utterly, completely hilarious. I cannot even imagine. I’m picturing the look on your face when the vet issued the instructions - I just cannot even see how to get a cat to cooperate, or tolerate even ONE of those things, let alone the full range of treeatment. Did the vet say to do all this with a straight face? </p>
<p>When ours gets his yearly shots? The cute, sweet, snuggly and lovable little pet transforms into a hissing, lethal, scary carnivore. I cannot even go into the room - I have to stay in the waiting room. </p>
<p>I also cannot picture the cure for this - as cnp pointed out the websites don’t say what is the cure, and I cannot imagine it would be anything like putting a cast on his tail, and I also cannot imagine how in the world we could manage to feed him any sort of pain medication.</p>
<p>The internet is amazing–a whole page devoted to cats with broken tails.</p>
<p>latetoschool–looks like unless your cat falls into category 4 or 5, her chances of recovery look good. The key seems to be anal tone. Which one of you is going to test it?</p>
<p>LOLOLOL ellmenope. No no no no no no no. Treasury couldn’t print enough money. Look - for years, I’ve paid all the bills, all the insurance, mortgage, medical care, two nice cars, food, sports, charitable contributions; I bought D the very best education from K forward that money can buy; I’ve worked very hard, made incredible sacrifices, built an incredible career and established considerable assets, and even successfully protected our property from I long lost count of how many scary hurricanes. And I am NOT going to top all this off by exploring the anal tone of a cat. Nope, uh uh, not happening, not in this life or the one to follow, no force on heaven or earth will get me to do that, don’t even go there.</p>
<p>D can do that, or, perhaps one of her very accomplished friends. She’s finished the premed core; she has one friend who has completed his first year of an MD/PhD program, another who just finished his second year and whose physician father is on the admissions committee of the med school, and yet another in the seven year BS/MD program. There is absolutely no reason why she should fail to connect through her friends and peers to someone who knows a vet, and whoever that ends up being can have the time of their lives figuring out the anal tone of this cat.</p>
<p>I’ve actually had a similar situation quite a few years ago with one of our Siamese cats. He crawled into a dryer and fell asleep on top of towels. It was the first time he’d ever done such a thing. My mother walked by, closed the dryer and put the dryer on ‘touchup’. It took her a few minutes to realize she had not put tennis shoes in the dryer and that horrible thumping had to be the cat. He was terribly overheated and this was definitely an emergency situation…so we ran him to the vet immediately. He also couldn’t lift his tail and we assumed it was broken. Turns out it was just bruised and very painful to lift. After a few weeks, his recovery was complete. But, the vet did put him on antibiotics. He said cats tend to quickly develop infections secondary to their injuries and that the antibiotics was a precaution.</p>
<p>It was a weird couple of weeks watching him drag his tail though…he looked just like a miniature version of a wild jungle cat…lol!</p>
<p>Oh, yeah. Completely straight face. Like he was giving me a shopping list to run the grocery store. He rattled it off so quickly that the enormity of the task didn’t register until I actually tried one of the easiest steps (oral antibiotics with a medicine dropper). Even that is no piece of cake.</p>
<p>The hot compress was actually do-able, but only once a day or so when the cat was curled up in a deep sleep. Once the cat was awake and alert, no prayer.</p>
<p>We were able to successfully move the strings about once a day. Massive tranquilizers, two people holding the cat, and I had to get good at moving very quickly and aggressively to tug the strings. When the vet did it, he put the cat on gas until she was completely out like a limp rag doll. I watched him stick a hydogren peroxide soaked q-tip completey through the cats leg – in one side, out the other. If I ever have to go through this again, I’ll just make a daily appointment and have him move the strings and clean the wounds with the cat unconcious.</p>
<p>ID I’m now totally in agreement that unconciousness is the key. You have far more nerve than I - I wouldn’t even have been able to attempt any of it.</p>
<p>We just got back from the vet, $300 poorer and no diagnosis. Our cat was completely, totally rebellious and the vet - who owns five cats of his own - isn’t convinced there is actually a break in the tail - he thinks it might be muscle damage or sprain (???). In any event, with the help of three assistants (three adults to control a 10 lb. cat) he did a full exam, including bloodwork, and after what seems like hours of hissing and howling, the strategy is that the cat is on anti-inflammatory medicine, and we have to bring him back Wednesday, at which point there may or may not be sedation + xray. </p>
<p>The good news is all the blood work came back clean - our cat is evidently in excellent health for being 11-ish years old. </p>
<p>The bad news is that if there is truly a break in the middle of his tail, which is what we sort of think - there is no cure - the vet says such a break will not heal and he cannot recover and the solution is to amputate that portion of his tail. I’m not very happy about that at ALL, as I cannot imagine the cat with half a tail. But D says it would be necessary as he would not be able to keep his tail clean, or keep it out of the way in the litter box etc. </p>
<p>If it comes down to that, I will get more opinions. I do not know that I can consent to such a thing. Actually, I cannot even bear thinking about it. In the interim, the immediate challenge is how to get one drop of anti-inflammatory medicine down his throat each day. Happily D thinks she has that one figured out.</p>