My Deaf Cat Annabelle Had An Accident

by Elisa Black-Taylor
(USA)

My deaf white cat Annabelle had an accident on Wednesday morning. It happened in the kitchen and the entire event is still unbelievable. I'm a good cat mama. I don't have any poisonous plants. I keep knives turned down in the dish drainer. I don't have anything at all that could cause harm to a cat or a dog.

At least I thought I didn't. I want to describe what happened to the reader's at pictures-of-cats.org so no other cat falls victim to this. The only problem is there's very little way to prevent this from happening.

First of all let me say my cats love going in the cabinet under the kitchen sink. There's not much stored on the right hand side where the drawers are and they like to get under there to hide or nap. Doesn't sound very dangerous, does it?

Wednesday morning around 10 a.m. I heard my daughter Laura screaming from the kitchen. I hurried out of bed and found Laura kneeled down in front of the sink with blood covering her hands. I had no idea what had happened. She was screaming that Annabelle was stuck and had bitten Laura when Laura tried to free her. I told Laura to grab a towel to place over the cat so she couldn't turn around and bite again.

Now for what happened. If you kneel down in front of your kitchen sink and look at the glider's the kitchen utility drawers slide on, you'll see there are very small holes in the metal along the drawer track. Somehow Annabelle had gotten her right back claw hung in one of those small holes. I still don't see my poor cat did it, but she did. We continued to try to free her with no luck. Annabelle was screaming and nothing was working.

I told Laura I was going to the bathroom the get the nail clippers we use to trim the nails on our pets. I decided it was better to sacrifice a claw than for Annabelle to break her leg, as she was well on her way doing. I never made it to the nail clippers. Laura yelled and told me Annabelle was free.

My poor kitty was limping and terrified. She couldn't put the injured foot on the floor and it was swelling up quickly.

What's really eerie about the whole thing is Laura was supposed to be out of town for the day and decided at the last minute not to go.

I took Annabelle to the vet where she was given a steroid shot and a shot for pain. Luckily she didn't break her leg, although I don't see how it was spared. All I could see while I was trying to free her was the grotesque position it was in as we worked trying to free her.

My vet was amazed at how I talked her out of the cage. All I did was put the cage in the floor with the door open and motion with my hands for her to come to me. She's a very intelligent cat.

My vet said she should be healed within a week and it's only a bad sprain. We're thankful it wasn't much worse. He didn't have any strong pain pills for a cat, so he asked if I thought we could give her pain medication if it was an injection. I remembered my daughter saying she had given insulin injections before, so he filled a hypodermic with three doses.

So I headed home with my poor kitty. I'm glad I didn't get pulled over by the authorities. I had a syringe full of pain medicine and an unmarked bottle of antibiotic pills I'd re-uped on for the kittens with the mycoplasma. I could have had some explaining to do. Of course, having a half drugged cat in the front seat would have saved me a trip to jail.

Annabelle has been taking it easy all week. She's restricted movement on her own and only comes out of her carrier to eat, drink and poop. Then it's back in and back to sleep. I take the carrier to bed with me. If she get hungry, she makes her way to the kitchen for food and comes right back to bed.

We feel so badly for her. I know she'll be returning to the vet Monday morning for a checkup and more pain medicine and possibly more steroids. She's very resillient and walks around without allowing the injured paw to touch the ground. Annabelle isn't too thrilled about receiving pain injections, but I think she knows we're trying to help her.

The question I have for the readers today is have any of your cats had really freaky accidents? This was definitely worse than when Furby got his head stuck in a banana box hole.

I've included a photo of Furby and Lola playing in the back of the cabinet. We even kept one of the drawers out for awhile because they liked to hide and chase each other. You can see the steel glider on the left hand side. That is what Annabelle caught her claw on.

Please keep Annabelle in your thoughts and hope for a full recovery.

Elisa