Breaking Cat News by Georgia Dunn for September 11, 2016

Years ago I had a 28 pound cat named Igor. He was not fat, he was just huge. One day I noticed him limping, and found a small perfectly round hole in his rear flank, that was obviously swollen and infected. I thought he had been shot with a BB gun. I needed to take him to the vet, but the only cat carrier I had was for a normal sized cat, not him. I stuffed him into it anyway. Any port in a storm, as they say. Anyway, got him to the vet and when she went to take him out of the crate he would not come out. She picked up the crate and started dumping, much the same as you would dump cat food out of a can. And he came out of that crate much the same way as cat food comes out of a can. The vet could only laugh and commented on how hard it was to get him out of the crate. I laughed back and said “Not nearly as hard as it was getting him into it”.

The good news was that he wasn’t shot. He had been bitten by another cat and it got infected. The vet explained that it’s quite common, and although people often say that a cat or dog’s mouth is cleaner than our own nothing could be further from the truth (which makes sense, given their “tongue as toilet paper” policies). A bit of antibiotic cleared it right up. Needless to say I bought him a larger crate.