This week: Vexing problems
I have spent a considerable amount of my life studying to be a vet and then upgrading my knowledge with further education. Now that I have been a vet for 10 years, you would think that I can solve any pet problem presented to me. That is true for the most part, but there are cases that stump me totally and it can happen quite often.
Occasionally I call in the next appointment from the waiting room and find an owner comes in without any pet. For example, the owners of a cat called Ah De. I would ask 'Where is Ah De?' and they would say they didn't bring her. I would get comfortable in my seat, lean back, take a deep breath as I mentally prepared for a usually all-too-interesting story and say, 'Go on, tell me the problem'.
The owner would say: 'I didn't bring in Ah De because there is no way we could catch her and bring her in to see you. In fact, since picking up Ah De off the streets, we haven't even been able to touch her.' Ah De was a stray and apparently rather wild cat. They would go on to describe Ah De's ear infection and skin problem.
There is a myriad of problems that vexes me here. They need to somehow trap the cat from under the bed, bring him in and we probably need to sedate it to do anything with it. There is a likely chance that the cat's ear problem will need daily treatment and regular monitoring. If we put this cat in a hospital cage for treatment, it is going to be a daily battle even to get it out of its cage, and if we manage to get it out of its cage we are probably going to need to sedate it again and probably manhandle it to apply a topical ear medication. We'll probably need to do this for two to three weeks if the problem is moderately severe.
There is also the cost associated with such intensive treatments for what can only be described as a simple infection. I need to consider the long-term well-being of this cat also. It is obviously very frightened at home and spends all its time under the bed, not to mention creating a hygiene problem. The cat has no quality of life at home. The owners need to either intensively domesticate it, which may not be possible for an adult cat set in its way, or accept that the cat should be neutered and released back into the wild where it belongs. But before release we need to fix the ear infection. You see the dilemma.