Life is nothing but exciting in our house. On Thursday evening, PJ decided he was feeling a bit left out, since he is the only one who hasn't gotten to visit the emergency vet this year. He jumped from the top of our computer desk to the top of our coat closet, an acrobatic feat he has performed many, many times, no matter how many times we fuss at him that he is going to get hurt one day. Thursday was that day.
He miscalculated his jump and missed the landing, falling straight down.
After his fall, he obviously had pain in his left paw. He couldn't put any weight on it, and was hopping around the house on three legs as we tried to catch him to assess his damage. We packed him up and took him to the emergency vet, the same one we took Max to a few weeks ago. They took x-rays, but didn't see any breaks. They told us it was a soft tissue injury and gave us some Metacam, which is an anti-inflammatory drug and sent us home. We gave him the Metacam when we got home and tried to make him as comfy as possible for the night. Friday morning he was feeling a little better, but still had a lot of pain, so we dropped him off at our regular vet, along with the x-rays and chart from the emergency clinic. Our vet didn't like the shots they took, so he took another view (and didn't charge us, yay!) and saw that PJ dislocated one of his toes. This is what that would look like... This is not PJ's x-rays. It is an x-ray I found on the internet and photoshopped it to show what a dislocated toe on a cat would look like.
We had three options:
1. Let it heal on its own, which will take 2-3 weeks, but he will be fine after that. Maybe a limp, but possible to have no signs of this injury.
2. Put him under anesthesia and pop it back in, but risk that it will pop back out again and be back at square one
3. Have surgery to put a pin in the toe to keep it in the socket.
We decided to go with the first option. Our vet sent us home with some pain medication that goes on the inside of the ears, and really seems to help him a lot. He can actually walk around and put a bit of weight on his foot, but when it gets close to time to get his next dose, you can tell that he is hurting, because it's worn off. Our vet also told us that metacam, which is kind of like kitty alleve, can cause kidney failure in cats, something that the emergency vet neglected to tell us when I asked about side effects. I asked if we could have something that wouldn't kill our cat, and the vet said that PJ probably wouldn't need it at all with the other pain medicine he was prescribing.
So we are just waiting for him to heal and trying to keep him from jumping around when he is feeling better on the drugs. Unfortunately, most of the things that cats enjoy doing involve using their front paws. It is a daunting task, indeed.
Here's a picture of Scout in PJ's carrier. It is the popular one since Ike.
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