How to Deal with a Cat that has a Broken Bone

Video Transcript

" Hi, this is Dr. Greg McDonald for Expert Village.com, and we are talking about cat first aid and things that you can do for your cat while you’ve noticed something is going wrong. In this session we would like to talk a little bit about broken bones. Most of the broken bones happen with a cat when they get hit by a car. Interestingly cats have such a quick reflex. A lot of the fractures happen around the face area because they turn and look back at the car just as it hits them because their reflexes are so quick. Again, they have a lot of problems here in their jaw area. They can break their bones on their jaw and some of the facial bones that we see up here. Some times they will break the synthesis, which is right down in this area here, and again, that could be something that needs to have attention by your veterinarian. The important thing that we were talking about first aid is fractures of the long bone, and they can break any one of their bones along their skeletal system. Another common fracture for cats is up in the pelvic area. Their hips and also up in here in their femur and where their femur meets their hips. A very common sight to them to get fractures, and so the thing to do when you first figure out that your cat has been hit or has a fracture is to be very careful. A lot of people are not used to their cat biting them or scratching them, but in a cat’s mentality, the only way they can protect themselves when something hurts is to bite or scratch. I’ve had an animal brought to us, and the owner has actually been bitten, and they are very surprised because their cat has been so docile its whole life, but now it has pain associated with the fracture. When you have a fracture of the long bones, it is also best to try to wrap the cat up in some kind of towel so that you don’t have the fracture flopping. It would make the fracture worse as you are taking them to the veterinarian. Try and splint the fracture in a cat would be pretty hard for you to do because their bones are so small, and they are in such pain it would be better to just kind of wrap them up, and we are going to talk a little bit about stopping bleeding in our next segment."