Alley's "Tale."

One of Alley's bad habits is that she really likes to run out the front door the second we open it.  We don't even have time to stop her most of the time.  And the best part is that she runs out and then just stands on our front walk way, waiting for us to come get her.  She doesn't care about being outside, she just likes the attention she gets when we take her back inside.  (Actually, it's kind of funny sometimes because she can be dead asleep upstairs and the second she hears Mitch's key in the door, she's up and out the door.)

Anyway, a couple weeks ago, I was coming home from the grocery store and my arms were FULL of groceries.  (In my mind, carrying in the groceries can't involve multiple trips to the car.  Admit it, you do the same thing.  You know you carry in way more groceries than you should just so that you don't have to make more trips.)  Well, Alley made a run for it, but I was already inside and I had already kicked the door shut with my foot.  And Alley's tail got caught in the door.

Like, REALLY caught. 

She couldn't even get away because the door was closed on her tail.  It was absolutely awful.  I will never forget her meow.

She came right back inside and hid under the couch.  Poor kitty.  Normally kitties are really good at forgiving and forgetting, but poor Alley was just in so much pain.  Her tail got munched right in the middle and she wasn't moving it at all.  She just let it hang.  Alley finally let me pet her and I was able to feel her tail (a little bit and she was NOT happy about anyone touching it).  And that's when I noticed that there was a chunk of fur missing and she was bleeding.  I felt awful.  Mitch felt awful for Alley and I.  But really, it was an accident and there was nothing we could have done.

She wasn't letting us look at it very well, so we didn't know how bad it was and we weren't sure if we should rush her to an emergency vet or if we should just watch her or what.  (Google wasn't a ton of help either.)  We eventually decided to watch her overnight and make a decision in the morning.  For probably the first time in her entire life, Alley was allowed to sleep on our bed without Mitch complaining about it. (She usually sleeps with us, but we all know that Mitch doesn't like it.)  Poor kitty.

The next morning I emailed a friend and asked if she (in her infinite experience with cats) had ever had anything like this happen and did she know what we should do with Alley?  (Part of our problem was that we broke up with our old vet and didn't really know where to go now.)  She emailed me right back and told me that she had had a cat break her tail and that we should take Alley in.  She recommended her vet.  I called and explained the situation.  The vet's assistant told me that cat's tails are suuuuper sensitive (they're basically an extension of their spinal cords, I guess) and that they're hard to heal because cats aren't good at leaving their wounds alone.  It's also really easy for the tail to get infected and if it does, a lot of times cats will end up having to have their tails amputated.  Or, alternatively, sometimes if the blood supply is cut off, the tail will dry out and fall off.  How AWFUL!  She said that we could just watch it and see how Alley did or we could bring her in.  After that speech and considering the fact that I had no idea how bad Alley's tail really was, I decided to take her in.  Better safe than sorry.

Anyway, the vet felt her tail and says he didn't think it was broken (whew!), but he'd have to x-ray it to be sure.  He didn't seem to think it was worth x-raying, so we didn't. She still had feeling in the top part of her tail, past the wound, so he said that was good.  He also didn't think she would have to have her tail amputated.  (All good things.  I told him Alley NEEDS her tail.)  He did end up shaving her tail to see the wound better and it was pretty bad.  Poor thing, she did NOT like letting him shave it. There was part of her skin still attached and kind of... hanging on, so he glued that back in place and glued the wound closed as much as he could. Then he put medicine on it and wrapped it up really well. He said to do what we could to get her to leave the bandage on for at least a day or two and if we could get her to leave it for three or four days, even better.  (It's hard to wrap a tail though because you can't wrap it too tightly or she'll lose feeling in her tail. But if you wrap it too loosely, it's easy to pull off.)  They also gave her a shot to help with the pain and an oral antibiotic to keep it from getting infected.  He said that as long as we could keep it from getting infected and give it time to heal, she should be fine.

(Black cats aren't the most photogenic.  Especially when their tail is hurting and they have been to the vet.)

We managed to get her to keep it on Tuesday morning - Friday night.  By then she was trying to use her tail a little bit more, we were proud of her for not bugging it, and we wanted to see how well it was healing.

All in all, it did okay.  As you can see, she still has a big bite out of her tail,

but she'll be okay.  I was going to blog a picture of the actual wound, but I'll spare you.

It has been 3 weeks now and I think she's on the TAIL end of her recovery.  (We told a lot of tail/tale jokes just after she got hurt.)  She's back to using it as much as she did before.  Now we just have to wait for the hair to grow back.  Well, that and hope that she has learned her lesson with the front door.