15 months ago I took Dale in as a foster while Dad was away. Dad was called up when the National Guard went to Iraq. He is now in Germany.
Dale was very thin when I first saw her. She had been losing weight every year and was down to 6 lbs. She gained 3/4 of a pound in the first 6 months and then lost more. At her annual check up she weighed 5.3 lbs. All of her bloodwork was normal for a cat that was born in 1989.
Because she had bad back teeth, I fed her mostly canned food. Still, she often refused to eat. She would go for two or three days without more than a tablespoon of food. Then she would eat well for a couple of weeks. Because of her age and general frailty, the vet would not recommend dental work.
Dale did not eat Sunday or Monday. She ate a little breakfast on Tuesday. Tuesday night she began limping on her left front paw. I suspected she had broken it. Off to the whitecoats in the morning.
The diagnosis was not a broken paw. It was worse.
Dale had a Brachial Radial Extrusion. This is a torn nerve in the armpit that controls use of the paw. This usually happens when a cat jumps and catches themselves with one paw and jerks the arm, or if hit by a car. Left untreated the paw will drag and scrape until there is a continuous open wound. The only treatment is amputation.
Sweet Dale went to the Rainbow Bridge at 12:15 PM today
Godspeed, little girl.
Mary
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Kim
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