I wrote a while back about Archer breaking his leg.  I didn't know he was
using his litter box when I hit the garage door opener and he panicked at
the sound, went flying into the house and hit his leg on the door sill (we
have an attached garage and keep the litter boxes there - the cats use a cat
door to go from the house to the garage and vice versa).  We immediately
took him to the emergency vet where they x-rayed the leg, gave him pain
meds, and put a cast on, then sent him home with pain pills and a muscle
relaxer.  He saw his regular vet two days later and Dr. French said the cast
looked fine so we would leave it on.  After three weeks I brought him in to
the vet for his check up as I was instructed.  Dr. French took another x-ray
and said the break was healing fine but he needed to be in the cast for
another three weeks (this was last Tuesday).  In order to check if the cast
had slipped, he took the tape off from the bottom to see where Archer's toes
were.  When he did he saw that Archer's toes were very, very swollen because
the cast was too tight (either they'd put is on too tight not allowing for
additional swelling of the leg, or Archer had grown in those three weeks, I
don't know).  [Side note - Archer is *such* a sweet boy that he licked my
hand while Dr. French was poking at his toes and hurting him - he just
licked harder and harder the more he hurt <sob>!]  Dr. French took the
too-tight cast off, put another cast on and sent him home.

I was barely able to see Archer's toes with the new cast, so couldn't judge
if the swelling had gone down after a few days, but Archer was determined to
get that cast off himself.  He would climb up the inside of the cage, stick
the cast through the bars, and then turn around and put his front legs on
the bottom of the cage and tug his leg trying to pull it out of the cast.  I
jumped up and got him loose every time, but by Saturday, the cast was
halfway off and turned around backwards so I brought him in again.  The vet
(Dr. Hilliard this time) asked me to leave him there for a while because she
didn't have the free time to put on a new cast while I waited.  I went home,
and two hours later she called me and said that she had taken the cast off
and the skin on Archer's leg was almost flayed and on one small spot the
skin was gone - she assumed from him rubbing against the inside of the cast
while he was trying to get it off.  She asked that I leave Archer there over
the weekend so they wouldn't have to put a cast back on right away - they
would give him pain shots and antibiotics.

Yesterday morning I talked to Dr. French and he said that Archer was putting
weight on his leg and the spot where it was broken looked pretty strong.  He
said we could leave the cast off as long as we kept Archer confined to the
kennel so he couldn't run and jump around.  He gave us Silvadine to apply to
the raw spots.

Last night I was looking at his foot closely.  He was moving the foot and
toes OK - stretching them out and separating them - but, although the
swelling had gone down, the toes seemed to be darker than usual and the pink
part of his claws, the "quick", was black.  I've never had a good sense of
smell - don't know why, but it takes a very strong odor for me to smell it -
but Ben said that his leg was stinky from being in the cast so long.  Maybe
that's it, but I keep flashing back to when Bandit was burned and her flesh
had turned necrotic.  I don't see any sores or raw spots on his foot (the
scarped skin is just at the knee joint (and BTW doesn't look nearly as bad
as the vet described - it's just pink like when you rub a sore spot on your
foot from a too-tight shoe).  I'm not seeing anything on the foot that looks
like it's dying off or anything - I'm just worried about the bruised-looking
toes and the black in his claws.

I just got off the phone with the vet's office - Dr. French won't be there
until this afternoon, and Dr. Hilliard didn't see Archer when he was
discharged.  The tech gave me the standard "bring him in", but I can't get
off work without getting into serious trouble (the only other admin is out
for three weeks).  I can take him in after work tonight, but was hoping to
get some insights here about what you think might be going on with Archer's
foot.  Should I say damn it all and leave work anyway to take him in, or do
you think he'll be OK until 6:00?