Treat Cat Lacerations & Cuts

Video Transcript

" Hi! I am Dr. Adrienne Mulligan. I am the owner of Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic. I am here today on behalf of expertvillage.com, and I am here to talk to you about taking care of cats with critical conditions, critical emergencies and health issues. Sometimes you will come across an injury on your cat that looks like a new laceration, or a new cut or oozing wound that you think just happened…and in general those aren’t always very fresh. In fact, most of those are going to be old abscesses created by a bite wound about a week ago, that you might not have noticed because under all that hair, you would not notice the little punctures, but the bacteria will develop underneath the skin and make an abscess, and over time it will eventually rupture, and you will have a large gaping hole that has blood in it, but it is old blood, and it is blood mixed with pus. So it will probably have a smell like an infection to it. That is not particularly an emergency, it needs to be seen by the vet the next day, but until then you can hot pack it, take a hot washcloth and you can clean it up a little, just with a hot wash cloth, put a little pressure to try to get the rest of the pus out of it, and other than that you should not be putting medication or peroxide in it, because the cat will lick those things off and out of them. So it is better to leave it alone until you can get to the vet with that one. "