Poor baby -- many purrs for her and for you, too -- is it possible to do a
skin graft over the exposed bone part?
Christine

Here's hoping all turns out well. A neighbour's cat had to have a partial
tail amputation & to be honest, it had no adverse effect on the cat. It
didn't seem to have any adverse effect on the cat's unerring knowledge that
she was a superior life form and always would be. I'm fairly sure
Lilly-Whiskers would be the same :)

Cheers, helen s

He will certainly recommend no exposed bone, but I'm sure he'll only do a
small amputation to where he can pull the skin up and stitch it over the end
of her tail.
Poor baby.  It's a good job that I can't get my hands on the person that did
it to her as I might not be responsible for my actions.

Tweed

Supportive purrs for the little one from us lot. I doubt there's a lot
to do to her tail, and even if a joint is lost she'll never miss it.
Might save the odd ornament over the years, assuming you've any left (I
haven't, after Pericles' huge bushy tail got busy and Snowball's short
but even bushier tail finished off the stragglers).

Purrs
Gordon & the FF

I am curious.  How do you know it was a person?  When I was in my teens,
we had a lovely black cat who had part of her tail bitten off by a d*g
that chased her.   On another occasion, I heard a terrific cat fight in
our condominium area.  The next day, I went for a walk around the place
and found a four inch section of orange cat tail.   As there are no dogs
in this area, I had to conclude sit was lost in a cat fight.

Poor little mite :(   Purrs for a better outcome than you are suspecting
right now.

Purring for the very best outcome.
Charleen

Awwww, poor little bittie!  Mega purrs coming for a good outcome!

Hugs,

CatNipped

Poor baby. We will send healing purrs and prayers.
Lily & her mama
Jazz, RB

Poor baby - I think of her all the time and I'm purring for her.

Positive thoughts and purrs will be on the way once I get an ongoing case of
outrage against those that would abandon an animal or deliberately injure
one.  I hope there is a God because I hope there is a special circle of
hell.

If it has to be done, I pray it can be done quickly and painlessly with no
after effects,

Jo

With any luck he'll just take the last couple of vertebrae, he'll only need
a very little bit of spare, healthy skin to stitch up. She probably won't
even notice that it's gone, kittens heal so quickly.

Purrs anyway, to our tough little sweetheart.

Jeanette

Lots and lots of purrs and best wishes for everything to go really well,
Polonca and Soncek

Still purring!!  She'll be whole soon!

Poor little brave and feisty girl! Many purrs on the way for her.

Purrs for Lilly-Whiskers, and for you.

Purrs for Lilly-Whiskers. I'm sure she'll be fine, she has a wonderful
carer.

Fortunately, that is fairly minor surgery and should heal quickly.  I
lived in the dormitory at Belmont College (now Belmont University) in
Nashville, TN during my sophomore year, and noticed a cute stray
kitten that various students were feeding.  A few days later, I saw
the same kitten again; she was limping, and most of her tail was
blackened and hairless.  I thought that someone had burned her, and
called my parents, who took her to an after-hours vetinary hospital
for surgery.  It turned out that, rather than being burned, her tail
and the inside of one thigh had been slashed, probably by a car fan.
The vet had to amputate most of her tail due to gangrene, which had
caused the blackened appearance.

My parents adopted her and named her Tinkerbelle.  She walked rather
stiffly for several months, but eventually regained her full
hoolikitten agility, including climbing to the top of the drapes
numerous times.  She had a tail-stump about one inch long.  The end of
the stump remained hairless, but otherwise made a full recovery.

My parents let Tinkerbelle have one litter of kittens before having
her spayed, and the next-door neighbors were amazed that the kittens
had full-length tails, despite knowing that their mother had lost hers
to an accident.  They told me several times that they had thought that
injuries to the parent animal would be inherited by the offspring.  Of
course, these were the same people who bought supermarket tabloids
each week and believed everything they read.  The neighbor lady once
said to me, "Of course it's all true!  Why would they print anything
false?".

Purrs for L-W on the way across the pond.
Sam, closely supervised by Mistletoe

Purrs from all the felines here.  Purdey (RB) had to have about
two-thirds of his tail amputated after a brush with a car - on the face
of it, the tail was just nicked, but the bone was actually broken so the
vet took it off at the break closest to the body.  The stump was very
expressive for the rest of his life (about nineteen years), and apart
from its obvious shortness, the only sign of anything wrong was the fact
that there were a number of white hairs at the injury site.