Tripod Tom
Iwould like to tell you about my very special cat, Tom. We got Tom as a kitten at eight weeks old and once he was old enough, he started to go out. He loved playing and would often stay out all night. We would always be wondering where he was and what he was up to, but it was impossible to keep him inside for long; he would always be crying at the door to go out.
One Sunday morning though, everything changed when he came home with an injured back leg.To this day, we don’t know what happened to him but we think he was probably clipped by a car. His leg was very badly damaged and he had lost most of the skin and fur up to his hip. We rang the local vet’s and took him to the 24-hour vet hospital, which luckily wasn’t far away. He was just over a year old at the time.
The on-call vet bandaged him up and gave him pain relief and told us to bring him back the following day when they could assess him properly, hopefully being able to save his leg.
The next day, we took him in and he was X-rayed. Unfortunately, his paw was shattered too much for it to be able to heal, plus he was what you call degloved, so he hadn’t enough skin and fur to regrow — we had to decide what to do.
The vet explained that even if his paw ever healed it would be a long and painful process and he would probably never put any weight on it and limp, so the best option was to remove his leg. We were all very upset for him but at the same time, glad he was alive.
We made the decision to have the amputation and he stayed at the vet’s for a few days afterwards to recover. We visited him and he was very happy to see us, and seemed to be able to move around very well even after just a couple of days.
When we took him home, he was still on tramadol pain relief and was a bit spaced out, but he soon started to move around the house and very quickly got used to his new disability.
Eventually, the inevitable happened and he started to ask to go out. We didn’t let him out to begin with but we have other cats and really felt sorry for him not having his freedom anymore. At the time, we still had an enclosed trampoline in the garden so we started letting him on that for a bit to get some fresh air, and he loved it. Once he was fully recovered and all his fur had grown back, we ordered a tracker and started to let him out with it on so we could see where he was. He was never very far away and it gave us peace of mind.
Tom is now nearly four. He goes out every day and has become a local hero. He probably doesn’t know any different now as he was so young at the time of the accident but he’s been so brave and independent — coincidentally, he was born on Independence Day.