Cows in Trees by JULIAN EARL

Author:JULIAN EARL [Julian Earl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781846892325
Publisher: Quiller
Published: 2016-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

Occasionally, animals experience things you never would expect them to survive. One cat I treated was remarkable. Whilst dogs can learn to sit and wait at the side of a road for cars to pass by before they cross, cats tend to have the idea that if they shut their eyes, sprint and hope for the best, they will be successful at crossing roads. This, of course, is nonsense and means many, many cats are hit by vehicles with a fatal outcome. A poor little tabby cat came to the surgery having lost an altercation with a car. She was clearly in serious trouble, having difficulty with breathing, visible skin wounds, an injured back leg, and had physically collapsed. Examination revealed an open wound just in front of a back leg, a dislocated hip, but also abdominal contents, fat and intestine protruding out of an abdominal wound that was approximately eight centimetres across. After emergency supportive treatment, and a period of stabilisation, we anaesthetised her to deal with her abdominal wound. Appropriate cleaning and exploratory surgery of the wound revealed a mass of necrotic (dead or dying) muscle and fat protruding through the hole in the body wall. I removed this tissue and continued investigating. There was remarkably little blood but, alarmingly, I found one kidney floating free in the abdomen. Considering the kidney has a very major blood vessel – the renal artery – for its supply, the absence of blood, clotted or otherwise, was astonishing. In addition, the cat’s spleen, also normally having a very rich blood supply, had been torn in two. The loose organs, the kidney and fragments of spleen were easily removed and the hole in her body wall repaired. However, this cat should not have been alive, never mind able to survive a general anaesthetic. But survive she did, and a few weeks later required orthopaedic surgery to treat her dislocated hip, the least life-threatening of her injuries. It would have been a major mistake to have euthanased her after the serious accident. Luckily we gave her a chance, which she repaid by recovering well and living for years afterward. Clearly some surprises are pleasant.

Regarding the absence of significant internal bleeding despite the massive trauma, as found in this cat, my logical explanation is that in the wild, trauma generally causes tearing of tissues rather than neat cuts like a razor cut, and blood clotting has evolved well to cope with tearing and trauma. Out in the wild, there are no sharp scalpels, razors nor glass to cause cuts, so evolution has dictated that bleeding from tearing wounds, i.e. non-slicing wounds, stops rapidly, but smooth wound edges are effectively unnatural, resulting in clotting being less efficient for those types of cuts. Even bites by predators involve some crushing and tearing, so clotting works well following such trauma. A road accident generally involves tearing and crushing injuries, inducing rapid clotting as nature intended.

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