#script x

[scriptveterinarian]

Hi! One of my character's cats (adult but age otherwise unspecified, neutered male) is going to get hit by a car. As a result he has to have a hind leg amputated - how long would he stay at the vets, what would his recovery from this look like and how long would it take? Also, what other injuries would he be likely to sustain? Thanks!

Leg amputation in a cat looks like a brutal surgery, but the recovery period is not all that long. The cat may be discharged to its owner’s care that evening, or the next day. I’d then expect it to spend two weeks or so recovering, during which time it needs to be strictly confined.

However, if a cat was hit by a car then it may have other injuries that necessitate it staying in hospital for longer, either before or after the leg amputation. If the cat has sustained chest or abdominal trauma, care of those injuries will be prioritized before the leg amputation, as you want the cat to survive the anesthesia.

Low speed impacts, such as running over the cat in the driveway while parking the car, can have bruising and crushing injuries but do less damage than high speed impacts. High speed impacts may also result in the following:

Diaphragm rupture, which will require major surgery to repair and will likely result in having a chest drain and multiple days of intensive care

Bladder rupture, which can result if the cat is struck while its bladder is full. This may not be diagnosed for a day or so but will then require abdominal surgery to repair.

Gut ruptures, splenic ruptures and liver lacerations are relatively rare, but would also require abdominal surgery.

The cat is also likely to have superficial abrasions, they also commonly shred their nails when being hit by a car. They may have fractured teeth also.

Cat generally heal very well if you can put all the pieces close enough together. It’s also worth knowing that cats with hind limb amputations will still attempt to scratch their ear with the absent hind leg, though this seems to be the only thing that really holds them back. They are generally very mobile and active compared to pre-amputation, but may be more at risk of arthritis.

Disclaimer

[scriptveterinarian]

Heya! So my story takes place in kind of an apocalyptic wasteland, and there's really no medical care. Cats are considered very valuable because rats spreading disease and getting into food supplies are a huge problem, and my main characters are lucky enough to find a cat! problem is, the cat has pretty bad ringworm. is there anything my characters could do to help the cat recover without access to medical care? Preventing him from scratching and shaving the affected areas, maybe?

Ringworm is difficult to treat at the best of times, especially in cats which are more vulnerable to side effects of oral anti-fungal tablets.

It’s worth remembering that it’s usually more common in kittens with their weaker immune system, and some kittens will become resistant to infection as they age with minimal treatment. Older cats with ringworm are more of a concern, because they will either have a very bad infection or have an immunodeficiency (Feline AIDS or Feline Leukaemia virus most likely).

Shaving helps reduce re-contamination, and is more use in long haired cats. If you are shaving a ringworm cat, however, you are shaving the entire cat. There will be more ringworm than you suspect there is.

In the absence of modern medications, which are a little risky in cats anyway, regular application of iodine may be adequate to treat ringworm, but you’ll be doing it for weeks. Anti-fungal shampoos might also be found when scavenging, some of them have expiry dates of several years. Care must be taken to prevent the cat licking anti-fungal shampoos though.

I have to remind you too that ringworm is a zoonosis, a disease that both animals and humans can contract. Your human characters can potentially catch this disease from the cat.

Disclaimer

[scriptveterinarian]

This isn't strictly a veterinary question but I've been trying to figure out if bears have uvulas and there doesn't seem to be any comprehensive bear-anatomy literature on the internet. Any help would be much appreciated!

For those that might be confused, the uvula is the dangly protrusion of the soft palate at the back of the throat, the thing that wobbles all over the place when cartoon characters scream comically. It is not the word used for a piece of feminine anatomy, and to please be careful if you intend to google images of this.

You probably need a zoo medicine and surgery text book for comprehensive bear anatomy. A second hand one might be fine for your purposes, because while medicine constantly changes and updates, anatomy tends not to.

This should have been a fairly simple question, because with the right image of a bear’s mouth it should have been possible to just look. However you can’t see far enough into a bear’s throat most of the time.

The best answer I can give you is I’m pretty sure they don’t. There’s no mention of them when intubating a bear under anaesthetic, and a multi-species survey identified only underdeveloped uvulas in a few primates, and even then not consistently across the whole species.

The uvula is thought to primarily be used in speech, so it makes sense that animals without a complex language have no need for it.

So your bears probably don’t have a uvula.

But a hypothetical bear-human hybrid or furry who is capable of speech probably does.

Disclaimer.

[scriptveterinarian]

My character has a cat that had some sores on his head/neck/shoulders. (The cat was a stray.) How would these sores be treated, and how long after he was healed could he be neutered? Would the vet give him his vaccinations while he was there for the sores, or would that be taken care of in a follow up visit? Thank you for this blog, sorry for asking so many questions at once.

To answer these questions accurately we need to know what the sores are, because different skin lesions require different treatments.

The most common (and most treatable) sores found on the head and neck of a cat would be either bite wounds and small abscesses from cat fights (likely if this animal is male and not desexed), or miliary dermatitis with a secondary infection.

If the sores are due to abscesses and infection then the cat will need a course of antibiotics and generally an anti-inflammatory for pain relief. If the sores are miliary dermatits then the cat may still require antibiotics if there is a secondary infection, plus a short course of cortisone to suppress the allergic or itch response, and attempting to treat the underlying cause, which is usually (but not always) fleas.

In either of these scenarios you would ideally wait until the animal has completes their antibiotic and cortisone course before vaccinating or performing surgery, which is approximately two weeks in most cases.

There are certainly other conditions that might result in sores on the head and neck, eg Eosinophilic granuloma Complex and feline leprosy, but these are not fast or easy to treat and are much less common.

So assuming this stray cat has one of the two more common conditions, to be treated it will need:

Antibiotics (either oral or by long-acting injection)

Either Corticosteroids or Non-steroidal-anti-inflammatories, but not both.

Flea and parasite treatment.

After two weeks, when the antibiotics and other medication have finished, assuming everything worked the cat could now be vaccinated, neutered and microchipped. It’s worth noting that the stray cat should be checked for a microchip at the very first visit, and it’s illegal to implant a second microchip into a animal that already has one unless it’s faulty. The microchip is your character’s new legal proof of ownership.

If the skin lesions have not healed, the veterinarian may discuss going ahead with the neuter anyway and taking a biopsy (or five) from the skin lesion to find out why it’s not responding to treatment. Results from a biopsy typically take 3 to 5 business days to return. Neutering a male cat is a day procedure.

If this cat has never had a vaccine before in its life, it will also need at least one booster after a month, depending on what’s being vaccinated for locally.

Disclaimer

[scriptveterinarian]

How long should my 7 week old kitten character go without food? She leaves home for plot reasons and won't be gone for very long but she can't hunt yet. I eventually plan to have her meet 2 pet cats who share their food with her, but until then is mostly alone when it comes to food. How many days should pass before I have her meet these cats and still be healthy?

Ideally not more than one. A 7 week old kitten is still very small and has a short intestinal tract. While they can survive longer than that without food if they then receive veterinary attention, 24 hours is the most I would push it in your story with her still being in reasonable health.

- Dr Ferox

Disclaimer

[scriptveterinarian]

I have a character who needs to pass as human to go on a mission to Earth. Unfortunately, having goat horns is not a good way to pass as human. She will need to have them removed, but she doesn't have official permission to do so, so she'll have to do it herself. She has access to a library specializing in related topics, and she *might* be able to find someone willing to help her, although it would be nice if she didn't have to. She can also use magic to dull pain. How could I make this work?

Introducing our first answer from Dr Dactyla, the new mod for ScriptVeterinarian.

So, as I see it, your character will have four problems to overcome: getting the horn off without damaging anything else, controlling pain, preventing extensive blood loss, and closing the skin over the horn stump.

Let’s start with the first issue. It’s going to be a bit more complicated if your character has true goat horns, rather than just goat-like ones. This is because adult goats (and other ruminants, like cows) have an open space at the base of the horn that communicates with the sinuses in their skull. The sinuses, in turn, are only a thin slice of bone away from the brain. By removing the horn, you create an opening into the sinuses, and it’s not a great idea to get an infection in there. Here is an image of the sinuses and their out-pocket in the horn (a.k.a. the cornual diverticulum) in a cow:

(Image is from: Textbook of Veterinary Anatomy by Dyce, K.M., Sack, W.O. and Wensing, C.J.G.)

If the character’s horns are only goat-like, though, they could be solid bone at the base. That would simplify things considerably.

Theoretically, the character could perform the actual removal of the horns by themselves using the same obstetrics wire vets do. The angle might be a little uncomfortable, but the basic idea is to wrap the sharp wire around a pair of handles to protect your hands and then saw back and forth with it until it does the job. The trick would be in preventing the wire from coming into contact with skin, hair, or anything else you don’t want damaged or tangled up.

You mentioned that the character can control pain magically, so I won’t go into the specifics of how we anesthetize goats for dehorning here. It’s probably more than enough to know that there are two nerves which are responsible for sensation from the horn, and we anesthetize (or “block”) them near the base of the horn via injections.

Lastly, we need to contend with the blood flow to the horn. Horns have a keratin covering wrapped around a core of bone, and bone is a living tissue which correspondingly needs a blood supply. Depending on how close to the skull your character makes the cut, there could be multiple blood vessels severed. If your character also has the ability to magically stop blood flow, they could probably manage this whole shebang solo; if not, they’re going to need a partner in crime to stop the bleeding, through some version of clamping, tying off, or cauterizing the arteries in question. Be careful with heat this close to the skull proper, though, as the brain is both closer and less tolerant of heat damage than you might think.

After all of this is said and done, the character will still have to find a way to close the skin over the spots where the horns were. If they can magically knit it together, you’re home free; otherwise, while it’s again theoretically possible to suture your own forehead, it’s not easy. They may need someone to do this for them, if for no other reason than that trying to sew backwards via mirror reflection is a pain.

With the skin closed, in the true goat horn scenario, the remaining holes in the skull will eventually fill in some with new bone, but it will take a while and the character might want to wear something to cover the spots in the meantime.

- Dr Dactyla

Disclaimer

[scriptveterinarian]

I have a demon character with horns. Can horns break? If so, is it painful? can it heal / grow out? Thanks, and love your blog!

An excellent question my friend. It depends on what sort of horns we’re talking about.

(Ram Image Source)

Animals with true horns, which are mostly ruminants like the ram and friends, which is also the classical demon look, have a core of living bone in the center of the horn. The outer layer is composed of thick keratin, but it is the shape of the living bone core that dictates the shape, size and direction of the horns. The living bone core is often much smaller than the keratin component.

(Goat skull showing bone core of horns)

The keratin has no nerves and little blood supply. The living bone core has a whole bunch of nerves, an impressive blood supply (it is bone after all) and if you break the horn too close to the skull then you will also have a big whopping hole into the frontal sinus.

This would be at least as painful as breaking one of your bones.

Horns can certainly heal, but they often heal in a not quite right manner. If you haven’t completely fractured off the living bone then the shape template for the new horn will be different. If your character has lost the living bone core, but still retains the germinal layer of cells around the base, then they can develop scurs.

A scur is like a remnant horn growing without a template. They often occur when de-horning hasn’t quite been done right or after trauma. They have an unpredictable shape, can grow in any direction, and are frankly quite annoying.

(A particularly funky scur)

These are often tipped (cutting off a portion near the end) and sometimes have no blood supply. They have no feeling, and can twist around to grow into other areas of the animal’s head.

There are other structures animals have which we often refer to as ‘horns’, even though they’re not true horns like these.

(Rhinoceros image source)

Rhinos do not have a living bone core in their horn. You can cut off parts of these horns, they’re made of keratin and can be thought of similar to a very fancy finger nail.

But uh, don’t be tempted to do it like the poachers do it, where they cut a straight line including both horns and part of the skull. That is going to be the equivalent of fracturing a true horn at the base and entering a sinus (or nasal cavity in this case). I’m not posting those pictures on here.

But lastly, another anatomical feature we humans sometimes think of as ‘horns’ are antlers.

Antlers are dead bone with no covering when mature. They are shed every year. When they are mature they have no feeling and no blood supply except at the very base. While they are growing they have a good blood supply,  but when mature they are inert. Antlers don’t grow bigger as such, they are shed each year and regrow, sometimes into a bigger or more pronged shape, depending on the species.

So take your pick. I don’t know which sort of horns your demon has, but I hope that’s answered your question.