The Foot Behind the Flower Pot

WARNING: This blog will contain graphic images of open wounds and surgical scenes. View this blog at your own discretion.

Imagine being a little girl waking up on your birthday, getting ready for a trip with your family to go to a nearby zoo when there is an odd meowing outside of the house.

This was the beginning of a very cool case to observe. A rural family heard meowing outside on a Thursday night, but not owning any cats (or having any farm cats) they disregarded it and went to bed. The next morning they discovered a very small gray kitten sitting outside near a flower pot, and sitting behind this flower pot was a foot! The kitten's foot to be exact. They bundled the kitten up in an old cloth and brought it (sans foot) to the clinic. This is the condition it came in:

 This is not the best angle but it was the best I could get at the time. You can see that the right hind-foot/leg is fully amputated at about the knee. The whitish area is some kneecap.

The "owners" had no intention of getting a pet but told the vet if the kitten could be repaired and it survived that the kitten would be their daughter's "birthday present". The father told his daughter she could name it "Tripod" or "Lucky".

Initially it was believed that the kitten had recently lost the leg, but it was puzzling that there was little-to-no blood by the flower pot where the kitten was found and the leg was not bleeding. It was then discovered that there was a little colony of maggots living on the inner thigh (near the groin) and it was decided there must have been  trauma of some sort to the leg and once the tissue died the kitten then chewed off its dead limb.

All that was left to do was to clean up the wound and finish the amputation. First it was thoroughly scrubbed, maggots were removed and the area was shaved and prepped.

 

You can see the remaining parts a little better in this photo- like the splinter of femur sticking up here. The excess bone, tissue "debris" and kneecap were removed.

Next any excess skin that was unnecessary for closure was removed. And then it was closed up.

 

 Finally the little guy got his teeny tiny testes tied up & removed. Almost didn't find one they were still so small!

Follow-up: He was named Lucky! He was given an injectable antibiotic but still developed an infection within a few days of surgery, was given an additional antibiotic and is now doing just fine with his new family!