armlessbear.com

Sometime this morning Spike will have the entirety of his left front arm removed. We can’t call him stumpy, because they won’t leave a stump. They take everything right through the scapula so that the entire arm mechanism is completely gone.

Now you may be wondering how it has come to pass that we’re taking his entire arm off. This is how:

It isn’t surprising to anyone who has met our cats to hear that they often do their very best to run outside at every opportunity. Usually in the mornings we’re very careful because we’re not equipped to have completely outdoor cats.

Yesterday, however, Spike ran outside and literally ran away. I was running late and decided that a day without the creature comforts of a soft sofa and a dish of food might cure him from running outside.

I went to work and completely forgot that the kitties were outside.

I didn’t think about the cats again until Mike called me at a little after 6 asking me to come home ASAP. There was something wrong with Spike. He had blood on his elboy and wasn’t able to put weight on his paw.

We loaded Spike into the cat carrier and off we went to the emergency vet.

$530, heavy narcotics, and 2 x-rays later we find out his left front radius has one complete break and other smaller fractures. This kind of injury can’t simply be put into a cast. The options are as follows:

1) Orthopedic surgery which involves putting a plate in the forearm to hold the bone still. Cost: at least $2000, no definite guarantee of success

2) Amputation. Cost $650 minimum.

3) …

So given many financial considerations and the fact that cats can do just fine on 3 legs, we opted to go with the sure and the considerably less expensive option.

He should be home with us around 5:30 tonight. We have antibiotics and pain meds for him. He’ll likely be drugged to the eyeballs for the next week, but should otherwise return to being a happy, healthy cat.

How did he break it in the first place? We don’t actually know. His collar is missing and the wound on his elbow was pretty superficial and does not resemble a bite or trauma related with being hit or run over.
It looks more like he got it stuck in something and in trying to work his arm free, broke it. We suspect (if) when we find his missing collar, we may be able to piece together what happened.