Written By Gretchen Harwell
I work in surgery at a veterinary hospital. I love surgery, I love blood and guts, I like the pace of surgery, and I like the surprises we sometimes get. There are very few procedures as rewarding as draining an abscess. You start with an animal, usually a cat, that is in a lot of pain and has one markedly swollen area. Most often this area is on its face or rump, because those are the areas that get bitten most in cat fights.
I work in surgery at a veterinary hospital. I love surgery, I love blood and guts, I like the pace of surgery, and I like the surprises we sometimes get. There are very few procedures as rewarding as draining an abscess. You start with an animal, usually a cat, that is in a lot of pain and has one markedly swollen area. Most often this area is on its face or rump, because those are the areas that get bitten most in cat fights.
Abscesses are not for the faint of heart, though.
They smell, they bleed, and disgusting things come out of them. Sometimes, disgusting lumpy things come out. Still, if you can stomach them, abscesses are great. My favorite abscess to date, not that I actually rank them, was on a big tom cat a few years back. Tom cats have great big heads with really thick skin that is hard to puncture, making them well suited to defend themselves in fights. However, every now and then, when a fight is especially closely matched, we end up seeing a cat who looks like he’s hiding an orange in his cheeks.
They smell, they bleed, and disgusting things come out of them. Sometimes, disgusting lumpy things come out. Still, if you can stomach them, abscesses are great. My favorite abscess to date, not that I actually rank them, was on a big tom cat a few years back. Tom cats have great big heads with really thick skin that is hard to puncture, making them well suited to defend themselves in fights. However, every now and then, when a fight is especially closely matched, we end up seeing a cat who looks like he’s hiding an orange in his cheeks.
This patient of mine had been feeling ill for several days, so whatever was in that cheek of his had been marinating for even longer. I sedated him, shaved the side of his face, scrubbed it, and made my little poke hole to flush it out. Of course, the usual foul smelling funk came out by the truck load and I made sounds of awe and disgust the entire time it did. That’s another thing about abscesses; I always find myself surprised by just how much they can hold. After several minutes of draining, I finally got to start flushing it out to be sure that all of the cooties got washed out. On my first flush, something got lodged in my poke-hole. I picked it out and set it aside, and continued with my part of the procedure. After I was done, I turned the cat over to the doctor and examined my little foreign body. It was about 3/4 of another cat’s tooth. I felt like I had struck gold.
Some owners don’t want to know when you find stuff like this and others want not only to know about it, but they ask if you can drill a hole in it so that they can string it on a necklace. This particular client was one of those owners. I love owners like that - I feel like we’re kindred spirits. The tooth was too small for drilling, but I cleaned it up and put it in a little pill vial for them. I’m not sure what they ended up deciding to do with it, but I guess if they got really adventurous they could go around town looking for the cat missing 3/4 of one of his teeth.
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