Cats & Spidercos

[noseoil]

Before anyone accuses our old cat of being aggressive, I must come to his defense. He's 19 now and mostly agreeable. Unfortunately, he also has long hair which can become a bit matted in the winter. Brushing him pisses him off, so I've been reduced to pulling the odd hair-wad off of various places from time to time. Most of the time he's pretty understanding, but at other times he can become annoyed with the prying & tugging. There's a fine line between pulling off a hair-wad successfully & having a reaction from him which has a negative outcome. The following images are the result of a negative outcome for both of us. The hair-wad in question was not successfully removed & my hand is now mostly recovered.

In his defense, he did warn me two times before latching onto the back of my hand with all four fangs and biting the $hit out of me, not bad for a cat this old. That was on a Friday evening a month ago. By Saturday evening my hand had swelled up from the watch band to my fingers & did look pretty nasty. My wife, the nurse, said if it wasn't getting better by Monday I should go see a doctor. By Monday it had stopped getting bigger & there were no tell-tale signs of blood poisoning or a bad infection, so I decided to leave bad enough alone.

There is just a lump now, which is about 1 cm in diameter & 3 cm tall. It had a soft feel to it, red, soft beneath the skin & was a bit "squishy" when poked. Yesterday evening it was harder & had more localized pressure, so I decided to let out a bit of the pressure before my wife came home. While she admires my self-sufficiency & independence most of the time, at other times she thinks it can be counter-productive. This was one of the times I deemed it better to seek forgiveness than permission.

Here's the lump under full pressure, prior to the cut. You can see the other puncture wound which has healed up nicely, just to the left of the bump. The two upper fangs are about 1 1/2" away and have healed very well.


I used my ZDP Dragonfly for the procedure, so here's what I did. The spine of the blade was laid flat to the back of my hand and the tip was used to push cut from 6:00 across the bump. This thing is very sharp & had a mirror polish on the tip. I did use sterile procedures, insofar as I was able, and prepped everything as well as possible.



1st incision


This did relieve the pressure, but there wasn't anything but a bit of blood which came out, so I made 2 more cuts to open things up a bit more, at 3:00 & 9:00, but there were no signs of infection. I wasn't able to get anything but blood from the incision. When my wife arrived home, she used the trash in the kitchen and noticed the gauze I had used to mop up with. Her comment was "OK, what's the blood from this time?" Nice to have an understanding spouse.



Here's a picture from this morning. The incisions are healing nicely, but my wife thinks it my have encapsulated and become a cyst, which may need a bit more work in the future. Wondering if I should get a book on hand surgery and start reading about how to........

[Evil D]

I have a Norwegian Forest Cat...extremely long, dense hair that gets matted no matter how often you brush him. I shave him about once a year. He's really not a fan but I think he's starting to understand because he's noticeably more active and playful after getting over the shave, which I think is a sign that he feels much better. He's clawed me real good a few times but never bit me. He's clawed me to the point that his claws were through my skin and not just scratching the surface... Like fish hook style.

[noseoil]

It doesn't look anything like this, does it? Here's the old man at about 13 years old and a bit more perky than he is now. We looked up our cat and the closest we could find in a book was the Norwegian Forest Cat. Long hair, (mostly) good disposition, playful and lives a fairly long time. They sure got that last part right. Our old guy is starting to look like the mouse in the Green Mile now.

[tvenuto]

I actually thought this would be quite a different story about spydero+matted hair+cat. It's actually the story I have to tell... We'll see if I can scare up some pictures.

[Evil D]

Yep, he has different color but the fur density looks all too familiar. They're a very large breed of cat too. Mine is the most mellow pet I've ever had...he just wants to lay in your lap and purr and has been that way since he was a kitten. That is unless you get out the laser pointer...then he flips out.

[tvenuto]

That is unless you get out the laser pointer...then he flips out.

Pretty sure this is universal. If we every find ourselves in an all-out war with feral cats, handguns equipped with crimson trace laser sights will be our ultimate weapon.

[Monocrom]

So far, a surprising lack of cats.

[tvenuto]

So far, a surprising lack of cats.

The internet reached its cat quota long ago.

[paladin]

Animal bites are not to be trifled with...especially cat bites...

That wound still looks pretty angry, even after treatment...

I'd have it looked at professionally, just sayin...hope you heal up quickly!

[noseoil]

The cat finally won. I ended up at the docs today as the infection wasn't going away. They lanced it open, drained it & put me on antibiotics. My boss asked what the cat was doing before the bite. I told him that with my luck he was probably licking his a$$.

Anyway, the swelling is going down. It's properly drained now & the cat seems to be enjoying himself. All's well that ends well.