26 June 2010

Miki's tail

When Miki was about 4 months old he appreared one morning trailing his tail, with a very noticeable kink in it. It didn't seem to bother him much otherwise. But it worried me - especially as I just had my first disappointing vet experience with their rounds of shots. Should I take him back to the vet? What would/could they do except expensive x-rays to confirm what was obvious? Put his tail in a cast?? Give him drugs that possibly did more harm than they offered relief? And anyway, Miki didn't seem to have a problem with it.
I did some research on 'broken tail in cat', and, as always with the internet, I bumped into any number of opinions and treatments, some of them downright scary (including amputation and euthanasia...) It can be quite overwhelming to pick through seemingly endless opinions offered out there, and make your own informed decision.
To my relief I eventually found some excellent info here. With that advice, I observed his litter box use (no issues), pinched his tail tip to see if he had any feeling in it (he complained, good!), and decided that he was going to recover without problems.
Sure enough, a couple days later he carried his tail high again, and with every week that passed the kink got a bit less obvious. And, finally, as of this month, I can say that any trace of the kink is completely gone - he grew out of it!

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