Colby the Nine Fingered Cat

Okay, now before you panic, he still has all his "fingers." What's he's missing is one of his claws on his front feet (which have five claws apiece, or they did).

Here's what happened.

We had our normal vet visit at the end of December. Everybody went together in one large cat carrier like the previous "all-together" visit, and this worked admirably well. I was able to lift it into and out of the car, carry it to the car from the dining room table and back again, and drag it along on its Cat-allac roll-y thing.

Thimble at the vet.
The other two (including Apricot!) came out to explore.

Being together helped steady their nerves for all three of them, and they were fairly normal in behavior when I got them home. Apricot did his disappearing under the sofa act, but that is normal for him and he came out fairly quickly, just a few hours.

Colby and Apricot at the vet

Colby, Thimble and I were in the kitchen. I was doing something at the counter and Colby was using one of the cardboard scratchers behind me. I turned around and noticed Colby's white paw was all pink striped.

Wait, what? Where'd he get pink on his paws from--oh crap it's gotta be blood.

Next question. Where'd he get blood from? (In other words, himself, or Thimble?) And the big question, how?

He took a step and limped almost imperceptibly. If it hadn't been for something that had happened earlier with Thimble, my mind would not have gone to his claws.

About a week before I'd been clipping claws (I try to do this close to the vet visit in order to be polite to the people who have to handle my cats) and I noticed one of Thimble's back claws looked strange. Like it was only half there. I had brought this to the vet's attention and she said it looked like he'd ripped it partially off, and this did happen to cats (never happened to any of mine!) and since it was all healed up and stuff, not to worry about it.

So now Colby has blood streaking his paw and he limped just barely? I sat down with him and made him let me look. He didn't fight me about it, precisely, but he was extremely reluctant to let me see.

Left front paw, his forefinger (had he been human) was claw-less and bloody. It had already stopped actively bleeding, and when I looked where he'd been there wasn't any on the floor.

So bonus, my cat has fast clotting blood, I suppose.

There wasn't any blood on the floor but there was a completely intact claw, only minus a cat's foot in it. It was equal parts fascinating and gross.

Told you it was gross.

Okay, um, now what do I do? I've never had this happen to a cat before--Thimble doesn't count because that didn't happen where I could see it and deal with it. I felt like a right fool calling the vet half an hour after I left there, but I didn't know what else to do.

The vet's advice was to keep it clean as best I could (given that a cat walks on all four feet and needs to use the litter box and covers their litter box leavings using their paws to move the litter) and make sure it didn't get infected (that would be puffy bright red flesh and ooze; again, gross). If it did get infected, then I had to bring him in for an antibiotic shot but for now he could stay home.

Both Ginger (the breeder) and the vet recommended putting neosporin (or an antibiotic cream similar to that) on his paw. I knew from previous cats that they're allowed to lick that and it's not poison or anything.

But Colby was really reluctant to have his paw messed with, so I left it alone, just checking it once a day. And by two days in, the raw place was filthy because he wasn't cleaning it. Colby and his (lack of) grooming skills. I asked Ginger how to wash it without getting all of Colby wet. She said don't--just put neosporin on it.

Okay, I will, I will. Phooey on him not liking it.

And hey, presto, magic! For Colby disliked the feel of the goo on his paw and cleaned it off, thus cleaning off his wound in the process. I thought to myself, well, that's kind of cool. I'm tricking my cat into grooming himself.

The next day--
Colby's none the worse
for the wear.

Six weeks later ...

Colby's paw is all healed up. He's still got a "please don't touch that" response to that one finger, when I'm clipping the other claws, but it's just a residual. I don't think it actually hurts him, given that his response isn't the instantaneous reflex of pain but the slightly slower thought process of "that paw hurt a lot, don't touch it now."

But the claw shows no sign of growing back.

And apparently, sometimes that happens if the cat has ripped out the entire thing, quick and all.

So now I have Colby the Nine-Fingered Cat.