Purrs for Trouble's back to heal nicely and for the operation to go
well.

Purrs for Trouble.  It's probably an abcess and once lanced, cleaned and
flushed out has a really good outcome.

Tweed

Purrs accordingly issued from  my lot that Trouble's trouble subsides
shortly.

Gordon & the TT (soon FF)

Purring for a troubled kitty.  May he soon be well again.   MLB

Awww. Purrs coming over the waters. I hope they can fix it right up. Nasty
wounds :(

Done.  Jake promises to help since he is having to stay in while I keep an
eye on a wound he has.

Jo

Purrs and birdie chirps on the way.

Jill

Lots and lots of emergency purrs on the way. Let us know how he does.

purrs on the way

Purrs for Trouble to recover quickly.

Concerned purrs. There's good and bad news about the healing abilities
of cats -- sometimes the skin heals so fast that an underlying infection
can't drain properly.

Many people don't realize that proper cleaning and drainage can be more
importnt to wound healing than antibiotics. It sounds like your vet
understands this. I hope Trouble is one of the cats that can understand
when people are helping him.

Poor Trouble -- purrs for his operation -- please keep us posted.
Christine

Purrs and prayers for poor Trouble. Hope he recovers soon.
Lily & her mama
Jazz, RB

  Purrs and doggy-wags coming, and fingers crossed that Trouble comes
through just fine and is soon back to good health.

  Jeanne

We're sending loads of purrs for your Trouble.  I hope he's recovering
nicely and on his way to wellness by now.

------
Krista

Belated purrs that all is okay.  Please let us know.

Ginger-lyn

Home Pages:
 http://www.spiritrealm.com/summer/
 http://www.angelfire.com/folk/glsummer (homepage & cats)
 http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~summer/index.htm (genealogy)
 http://www.movieanimals.bravehost.com/ (The Violence Against
                        Animals in Movies Website)

Thanks all for the purrs.  Please keep 'em coming, because my poor
Troublecat is looking very sorry for himself.

The full story for them as wants to hear it:

Three weeks ago, one night Trouble came in with a bald patch halfway
down his back and a raw, bleeding wound the size of a 50p piece right
over his spine.  We thought it had just happened.  We took him to the
vet the next day, and the vet said it wasn't fresh, but an infected
bite, probably a cat bite, likely a couple of days old, that had burst.
The bald patch was because Trouble had been licking it so much.  He gave
it a good clean & sent us home with a short course of antibiotics.

We did the antibiotics of course, and did what we could for the wound,
like putting tea tree ointment on it, but TBH we were never really
worried about it after the vet had cleaned it - thereafter it always
looked clean, and we thought it was healing nicely.

So then, Wednesday night he came in, and it suddenly looked terrible.
The original wound was bigger and bleeding again, and all round it there
were loads of new wounds, all weeping & bleeding & looking infected.
And the skin on his bald patch looked grey, not pink.  And he had a
temperature.

Took him to the vet yesterday, the vet kept him in overnight and
operated today.  FIV & leukaemia are negative (thank ghod), X-ray shows
nothing of concern.  There didn't seem to be any foreign body like a cat
claw embedded in the wound.

What the vet told me was that the original abcess hadn't healed
properly. It had remained infected & grown & the new wounds were his
body's attempt to clear it out.  Gravity was against us; the wound
sitting on top of his back meant that the gunge couldn't drain.

So the vet has cut out all the infected tissue & stitched it back up.
Poor Trouble looks like Frankenstein's cat, with a six-inch slash wound
across his back, with rough comedy stitches holding it together.  (I
know there's finer stitching below, but that's not visible).

We've also got a long course of antibiotics this time.

It's worrying that cleaning the wound & antibiotics wasn't enough to
sort it out last time.  I just hope it is now.

I don't even want to think about what it cost - as much as this month's
mortgage <ulp>.

Sending good thoughts and purrs to you.

How is Trouble doing?