WARNING: GROSS PHOTOS TO FOLLOW!
Margaret
Elastic ponytail holders.
Twenty. Eight. Elastic. Ponytail. Holders.
A big stupid Lab? Sure, I’m almost surprised when I’m presented with a young vomiting Lab and he *hasn’t* eaten something foolish. But a cat? Oh come ON now! Cats are supposed to be smarter than that.
The surgery was done Friday the 4th. The cat was still feeling fine, fully normal appetite, pissy as hell and her stomach was PACKED FULL. The stomach was HARD! How this cat was still able to process food, let alone why she was still hungry with a stomach that was fuller than full……{shaking head}
So y’all have been warned.
Seriously, look away if you’re squeamish.
Okay, you asked for it.
The stomach has been isolated and exteriorized from the abdominal cavity.
The cat’s head is to your right. A normal stomach, that is to say, a stomach that isn’t packed full of elastic, is usually flat at this stage of the game.
A small incision is made in the stomach wall. The incision has to be large enough to allow delivery of the object(s) without tearing the tissue.
In this case the incision was made and the hair elastics started popping out. There was that much tension inside the stomach.
The whatsis is removed — ideally intact, but piecemeal if necessary — from the stomach.
And removed……
And removed.
At which point you poke around inside the stomach to be sure you’ve gotten everything, poke around in the rest of the intestine to be sure you’ve gotten everything, and then get the hell out.
I wasn’t there on Friday and I didn’t get to do the surgery (a shame, really, I really rather enjoy a good gastrointestinal foreign body), but my understanding from our new doctor was that the cat was such a pisser postop that they didn’t even send her to the local 24 hour hospital for overnight care. Too fractious, doing too well to need overnight care.
Cats never fail to astonish me.
7 Responses to “WARNING: GROSS PHOTOS TO FOLLOW!”
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February 9th, 2011 at 10:44 am
OMG. 😯
Yup. Cats is weird. And as the sometimes proud owner of one of those stupid/smart labs you were talking about? Word. Thankfully surgery wasn’t necessary, our vet kept Tycho and was able to determine that things were “progressing” so to speak so we just waited for the inevitable. You know those flying squirrel toys? Yup. Forget one time to remove it from the yard after playing with him and down it went. 😐
February 9th, 2011 at 12:42 pm
The Chuck-a-Duck and Hurl-a-Squirrel toys have been insanely popular for eating. I’ve removed socks too numerous to count, underwear, twine, cassette tape (thankfully MUCH less common recently), marbles, rocks, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles….
I’ll have to see if I’ve still got the photo somewhere, but Gorilla Glue is also quite popular and produces a REMARKABLY interesting gastric foreign body.
February 15th, 2011 at 6:18 am
my cats love hair thingys mostly they carry them around and drop the in there water dish
February 15th, 2011 at 6:19 am
them
February 15th, 2011 at 11:00 am
Margaret,
Thank you for the truly disgusting but strangely fascinating full color fotos of Vet Surgeons at Work. I believe I’d never have guessed what was in that cat’s tummy…not that I really, really wanted to know! When opening your blog in future, I’ll try to avoid this segment, BUT: add me to your Fan Base! It’s fascinating to get a glimpse into the inner workings of another profession!
March 4th, 2011 at 7:33 pm
I think Grandpa is trying to see how many words he can use that have three syllables. :3
In any case, what happened to the poor kitty’s tummy button? o.o”
March 4th, 2011 at 8:21 pm
Erm…. Tummy button?
I mean, cats do _have_ tummy buttons just like people do (except they’re all flatties instead of innies or outies), but it’s a skin thing……..
The skin incision for a gastrotomy (see, Tony isn’t the only one who can use big words) does actually get made along the abdominal skin in the area of the umbilicus (rim shot, another multi- syllable word!). Sometimes the tummy button gets bisected, sometimes it doesn’t.
Wouldn’t that be a great name for a band? ‘The Bisected Tummy Buttons’!
Anyway once the hair grows back no one notices if their tummy button is a little crooked or not.