Cat Abscess

The cat abscess is more common amongst feral cats. Timmy the stray cat we feed and care for has got into several fights. Feral cats will do this, particularly male cats (see Cat Fights of Male Cats). Fights lead to scratches and tears around the head, shoulders, ears and legs. I knew that Timmy had got into a fight because he has small scratches on his skin in these places. But an inspection did not reveal anything big or troublesome. Then I saw a small scratch on the back of his head and a small patch of hair missing. I thought for a while that this was ringworm as it looked a bit like it and he has given me ringworm (it is a zoonotic disease, a fungal disease in fact - see cat ringworm).


Cat abscess on ear recently treated (drained and medicated) by a vet. This is not my cat as I was too concerned to photograph Timmy at the time, racing around to a vet and being concerned that he wouldn't cooperate as he is a feral cat etc. Photo by appaIoosa. The cat in the picture is called Tabitha who got the damaged ear in a, yes, you guessed it, fight.

Anyway, the next day the area under the skin where the scratch was had become hard and swollen and I knew he had an infection, a cat abscess. I could have done better, though, as an infection from a puncture wound from a cat fight can be prevented if proper care is given with the first few hours. One of the problems with this feral boy cat is that he is just that and he comes and goes. So I cannot act quickly as he is not here. He may also "belong" to someone else. I just don't know.

Well I took him to the vet and he was treated (see the full story of this and update by clicking on the link above or here: Cat Fights). This then is what happens when there is a cat abscess:

• it is commonly caused by a cat fight
• the skin is punctured
• puncture wounds allow skin bacteria to get established beneath the epidermis. The epidermis is the outermost layer of the skin
• a cat abscess is a localized pocket of pus beneath the skin
  
• the area will be tender and will feel warm and firm (fluid under pressure). It may appear red. On Timmy it didn't as far as I could see

Update 10-3-2010: About one year after the abscess described on this page he got another one. Here is the story in a video:


A stray cat gets into a fight and gets an abscess from Michael Broad on Vimeo.

Treatment for cat abscess:

• the vet shaved away the hair around the wound
• drained the puss from the infected area
• administered anti-inflammatory and pain killing drugs
• left the wound open as this allows it to heal faster
• gave me instructions to administer one antibiotic pill daily and to wash the wound area with salt water daily
• Timmy was not fitted with a collar (lamp shade type to stop him scratching). I suppose this was because he is feral. Timmy did scratch it, which concerned me.
  

The Cat Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook states that the infected cavity of a cat abscess should be flushed with dilute Betadine solution or a dilute hydrogen peroxide solution (one part to five). The antibiotics, the book says are usually, penicillin, Keflex, Tetracycline or Chloromycetin.

I am yet to see Timmy since he went out yesterday. I couldn't keep him in. But see update below.


Update: 6 hours after I wrote the above, Timmy came in. This shows Timmy's wound after going to the vet and one day later. I gave him his antibiotics in his food and washed his wound with salty warm water. He was a good boy and ate well. I was pleased to see him. The cat abscess looks a lot better. It is dry and hard but there is still some puss underneath. I hope it will go with the antibiotics.

Update: Timmy made a full recovery, the antibiotics working efficiently and his abscess disappeared in about a week. His hair grew back in about two months. Timmy still comes around, still eats like a horse and stays a while sometimes. If I moved home I would have to take him with me as he is part of the family; only beforehand I would put a collar on him with a message asking the owner (if he has one) to come forward.

Here is a video about cat abscesses:



For more, generally please see:

• Cat Health Problems
• Cat Illness Symptoms

Photo published under creative commons license:

Sylvester the Cat Cartoon

Sylvester the Cat Cartoon is one of the most popular. He is a Warner Brothers cartoon star. He is well known for his lisping and bird craving! In fact, it is his lisping that makes us remember him. He's a black and white cat, a very commonly encountered type of mixed breed or random bred cat in the real world. Sylvester made his debut in 1945 in Life with Feathers.  One of the visitors to YouTube summarizes the plot quite well:

Life with Feathers is a 1945 Merrie Melodies cartoon starring Sylvester and an unnamed love bird. A love bird is kicked out of the cage by his wife and decides to kill himself by getting a cat to eat him. But the cat refuses, believing him to be a poisonous bird. But when the cat finally decides to eat him, the bird changes his mind.

It is not possible to show that video here. Many or nearly all of the YouTube videos of Sylvester the Cat have been removed by YouTube for breach of copyright. There has been a cleanup! However, here is one that remains for an unknown reason:



The now famous Sylvester the cat cartoon phrase, "Sufferin' succotash" is used for the first time when the cat sees the love bird. At the time Sylvester is strolling down a line of trash cans selecting tasty morsels of waste food and placing them on an upturned trash can lid as if he was at a buffet in a restaurant. In this first cartoon short, the usual order of things, cat chasing bird, is turned upside down. The bird, "a henpecked parakeet"¹ wants to commit suicide and the cat refuses to oblige and eat the bird.

In the next film things go back to normal, when Sylvester chases a woodpecker. The cartoon film is called, Peck up Your Troubles and was made in 1945. Sylvester gets into trouble in this one as the woodpecker is very resourceful. The woodpecker chips away at the branch that Sylvester is on and his stilts get pecked at. Sylvester eventually blows himself up using the dynamite intended for the woodpecker.

There followed, Kitty Kornered (1946) and Tweetie Pie (1947). In Tweetie Pie the cat is called Thomas, in fact (strange). The plot and style of the Sylvester cartoon character in the Tweetie Pie cartoon is repeated in 44 further adventures. This was a very successful relationship. Tweety Bird is a placid but sadistic¹ canary battling it out with Sylvester. Tweety Bird is rescued from the cold by Sylvester's "owner". Sylvester spends the entire cartoon trying to get into the bird's cage to eat it. Tweety is very resourceful and saws the furniture that Sylvester has staked up and unplugs the electric fan that the cat is using as a propeller.

F1 Savannah cat wanting to hunt caged bird. Photo: Michael.

The Tweety Bird -v- Sylvester cat battle continued throughout 44 episodes including these cartoon shorts:

• Home Tweet Home (1950) - park fight
• All Abir-r-d (1950) - train battle
• Canary Row (1950) - hotel mayhem
• Tweety's SOS (1951) - cruise sheep battle
• Bird in a Guilty Cage (1952) - the title is a nice play on "gilded cage" - fight in department store
• Sandy Claws (1955) - beach fight
• A Pizza Tweetie Pie (1958) - Venice, Italy, more mayhem

An elderly human occasionally appears in the cartoons, the female (Granny) owner of Sylvester. She reprimands him and hits him with a broom for chasing Tweety Bird. Sylvester the cat cartoon also has his work cut out dealing with another adversary, Hippety Hooper, a baby kangaroo. This relationship lasted for 12 films. Sylvester thinks the kangaroo is a large mouse. One of these cartoons is called, Pop 'Em Pop (1950) in which Sylvester the Cat is accompanied by his son, Sylvester Junior who encourages his dad to fight, when he really shouldn't as the cause if hopeless. The son uses emotional blackmail to make him fight and to chase his adversaries. Sylvester's foes were:

• Tweety Bird
• Hippety Hooper
• Wellington Bulldog in Doggone Cats (1948)
• Another (nameless) mouse in Mouse Mazurka (1949)
• Mike the bulldog a friend of Sylvester who is "shamed into fighting Sylvester"¹ in Stooge for a Mouse (1950)
• Timmy Mouse in Little Red Rodent Hood (1952). Sylvester plays a wicked wolf in this cartoon.
• Spike the Bulldog in Tree for Two (1952). Spike is goaded by Chester into attacking Sylvester and fails but ends up fighting an escaped panther instead.
• Speedy Gonzales in Speedy Gonzales and Oscar winning film of 1955.
• Sam the Cat in Trick of Treat (1959)

Sylvester the cartoon cat starred in 104 cartoons in all. The animator was Friz Freleng. Friz designed him to be a little like a clown with baggy trousers and the red nose. The voice was Mel Blanc.

See also:

• Bill the Cartoon Cat
• Top Cat Cartoon

Note:

1. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Cartoon Animals

Sylvester the Cat Cartoon to Cartoon Cats

Cat Rabies Symptoms

Rabies Sign by bartmaguire

It is probably worth recognizing cat rabies symptoms as rabies does occur in cats in many countries and in the United States, the home of the biggest domestic cat population. America also has the most developed cat fancy, I would say, despite the cat fancy starting in England in the 19th century. In England rabies does not exist, by the way, due to stringent controls over many years. Perhaps the fact that it is an island also helps a lot. I read somewhere that the channel tunnel (connecting England to France) is jeopardizing the rabies free environment of England.

I was prompted to make this post because of news story of a domestic cat in Gainsville, America that caught rabies.

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Two residents of Gainsville were bitten by the domestic cat in question and had to be treated. Treatment (post exposure to rabies) consists of a series of injections and is normally successful, as I understand it. The cat, an outdoor cat, must have come into contact with an infected wild animal. Apparently, there were 43 confirmed cases of rabies, in wild animals, in Hall County in 2008.

The cat appeared to be ill and was being taken the vet by its keepers. The vet put the cat down (euthanized the cat) and tests took place to confirm rabies. Clearly the symptoms of rabies presented as a general illness to the owners. What are cat rabies symptoms? Of course cat rabies is the same as rabies found in any animal, wild or domestic including humans.

Rabies Symptoms

The incubation period (the time from first infection to signs of the disease) can be short or long. The incubation period can be from a week to a year. The closer the bite to the head of the victim, from the infected animal, the shorter the incubation period. Symptoms start with pain and/or tingling at the site of the wound combined with fever, loss of appetite and headache. There are two ways it can develop:

1. Furious Rabies - this is the form that took hold of the cat mentioned above. Symptoms in order of arrival: anxiety, jumpiness, disorientation, stiff neck, seizures (fits), convulsions, dilated pupils, sensitivity to sound, light and temperature. Within a week there a fear of swallowing, attempts to drink cause spasms of the throat and diaphragm (fear of water - hydrophobia). Even the sight and sound of water brings on these symptoms. Next: delirium, hallucinations and delusions develop. This is when the biting takes place. These attacks of biting occur in between non-delusional states but there is still acute anxiety and mental distress.
2. Dumb Rabies - Less common. The spinal cord is affected causing muscle paralysis, which in turn leads to lung and heart failure and death usually about one week after the severe cat rabies symptoms show.

There is an argument to vaccinate against rabies (it is obligatory in the US but not in the UK). It depends on where you are. However there is a change in thought about vaccinations generally as cat vaccinations can cause severe health problems of their own. Vaccinating our cat should be considered as a medical procedure not a routine and automatic process. Here are some Cat Vaccination Recommendations.

Cat Rabies Symptoms to Cat Health Problems

Photo header: published under creative commons:

TNR is Not Good Public Health Policy

TNR in action -being injected with vaccines - photo by Feral Indeed!

TNR is Not Good Public Health Policy. We must manage feral cat colonies on the basis of known public health issues (and not ethical principles? - my question). So says the reality check website and the website: My Central Jersey (http://www.mycentraljersey.com). TNR stands for trap, neuter and return. TNR is generally accepted as the most humane and the only reasonable way to deal with and manage feral cat colonies. Simply killing them does not work as it leaves a void for neighboring feral cats to fill (see, for example, Ground Shooting of Feral Cats).

What is being argued is that sustaining large feral colonies that do not receive regular veterinary care is not sensible in terms of the important issue of peoples' health. The sayings of a number of organisations are used in support of this argument. The argument deserves attention. I'd like to address the statements of these organisations to see if they stand up.

National Association of State Public Health Veterinarians - they make a number of statements. 

"…no evidence exists that maintained cat colonies adequately reduce human public health risks or appropriately address their impact on pets or native wildlife". 

Comment: I didn't know that the intention of TNR (the purpose of which is not to maintian colonies but to gradually reduce them humanely) was intended to reduce human health risks. The primary intention of TNR, as I understand it is to deal with feral cats humanely i.e. to help cats not humans.

"…the maintenance of free-roaming/unowned/feral cats can be detrimental to public and environmental health…" 

Comment: This is, no doubt, true. The only unanswered question is how big is the risk (very slight in my view) and if the risk to public health was a major factor in decision making there are thousands of hazardous events taking place daily that go unaddressed such as medical negligence. About 40,000 people die needlessly in UK hospitals each year through botched operations or care and nothing is done about it. How many people die from exposure to feral cats? How many people actually see feral cats?

"There is no evidence that colony management programs will reduce diseases such as bartonellosis, larval migrans, toxoplasmosis, and vector-borne zoonotic diseases. Rabies will also continue to be a risk, as such colonies are not closed". Finally, they state that, "Several reports suggest that support of "managed cat colonies" may increase the public's likelihood of abandoning unwanted pets in lieu or more responsible options". 

Comment: Feral cat colony management is about the gradual reduction in that colony through neutering coupled with one off medical care. That is the best way to gradually remove health risks. It is currently the only proven way of doing it as far as I am aware. Shooting feral cats etc does not work. If TNR is Not Good Public Health Policy are they suggesting killing feral cats instead? The reduction in disease of feral cats in the TNR program isn't the primary goal. As the population reduces the diseases will naturally subside.

American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians

"Bites, scratches, and feces from feral cats can be a significant risk for exposure to several zoonotic diseases to the people that care for the feral cats as well as the general public".

Comment: Yes, true, but how big a risk and to how many people? Very few people in terms of a percentage of the whole population are engaged in the TNR programs and these people are aware of the risks and are volunteers. In addition vets are involved in these programs and are aware of and protect themselves from these zoonotic diseases. And there are very few zoonotic diseases of any significance. Rabies is one but rabies in feral cats is extremely rare in my opinion although I do not have figures.

Association of Avian Veterinarians

"supports actions by governmental wildlife agencies, public health agencies, and public or private organizations to ban or eliminate cat colonies on public lands in a humane manner and discourage feral cat colonies on private lands"

Comment: I think that there is a consensus that there is no better way currently to "eliminate cat colonies...." that the TNR program. What other humane method does this association suggest? The root cause needs to be looked at too; irresponsible companion animal "ownership".

Wildlife Disease Association

"supports actions by wildlife management and land management agencies, public health agencies and private organizations to ban or eliminate feral cat colonies"

Comment: As above.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Comment: Their major argument is that, "cats accounted for 54 percent of domestic animals found with rabies in 2005." How many cats does that represent? In Hall County, USA, all the 43 cases of rabies infected wild animals. One domestic cat caught rabies and infected 2 people who were safely treated. Once again this is about risk. See Cat Rabies Symtoms.

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TNR is Not Good Public Health Policy - For me the point is this. There are risks in the TNR program that lead to public health concern, fair enough. But what is that risk? It needs to be quantified. I would argue that it is a slight ridk and it should not be used to support an argument that willy nilly killing, by any means, should be allowed as is the case in parts of Australia and no doubt other countries. Australians can shoot domestic cats legally. This can lead to "accidents" that are legally actionable (for compensation). And yet the feral cat population in Australia is not in decline. 

In short, the benefits of TNR outweighs the burdens. And the focus should not be on the feral cat but the root cause of the feral cat, us, you and me, people, the human. Lets tackle that issue long and hard before we tackle the symptom, the feral cat.

Please see these:

1. Savannah cat ban in Australia is wrong
2. Ground Shooting Feral Cats
3. Bengal Cat Shot in Australia
4. Feral Cats of Australia

TNR is Not Good Public Health Policy to Feral Cats

Animal Humane Society Minnesota

A recent story about the Animal Humane Society Minnesota, if true, reinforces my cynicism about "No Kill" rescue centers in America (see No Kill Cat Shelters). I know that there are many good and genuine ones but this one needs to prove to me it is one of the good ones. 130 cats were allegedly rescued from a mobile home in St. Anthony Minnesota by the Animal Humane Society (AHS), Minnesota. As I understand it, within 48 hours they had been euthanized (lets say, killed, it is more realistic). This is despite:

• the mission statement of the AHS being stated as "To engage the hearts, hands and minds of the community to help animals".
• the vision of the AHS being stated as "To compassionately and responsibly create a more humane world for animals."
• AHS allegedly not returning calls to those offering support for the cats
• an AHS representative saying that the cats would be kept for 2-3 weeks for evaluation (this time frame is, I believe, necessary to receive confirmation of ringworm from a laboratory)

The reason given for killing all the cats was that they had behavioral problems, herpes virus, ringworm and FIV. FIV cats are potentially adoptable. Ringworm can be transmitted from cat to human. However, ringworm is really nothing to worry about for humans. It is easy to cure, of no real consequence (see ringworm in cats). It is not a reason to kill. And it is simply not believable that all 130 had behavioral problems. Feline herpes is a common disease and tends to flare up when cats become stressed, which was a predicable outcome under these circumstances. The reason to kill all the cats given by the spokesperson of the Animal Humane Society, Minnesota, does not therefore stand up to scrutiny, in my opinion.

Why were they killed in such a perfunctory manner? I am very cynical. Was financial reward involved? Were do the bodies go to? Are they used in a commercial process somewhere? Or was it just a case of too many cats to deal with and the best way was to kill them all without going through all the checks etc. And if so what is the purpose of a rescue center? You tell me.

The story comes from http://www.startribune.com. The news comes from Mike Fry of Animal Ark Shelter, Hastings. But these are not his words, they are mine. I just don't think it is as it seems out there, sometimes. Interestingly, one person thinks there are no feral or abandoned cat population problems (see solutions to cat overpopulation). Are things dysfunctional in the cat world?

Animal Humane Society Minnesota to The Cat should not be Domesticated