Abandoned Pets        

    Paco appeared at our clinic last Monday.  He was a stray cat who had been found injured by a good Samaritan, and she and Dreampower Animal Rescue had pooled their resources together to try to help him out.  It turned out he had a microchip, which made it possible to identify him and to contact his owners, but when we called them to let them know we had their cat they informed us that they had moved to another state and didn’t want to take the cat, so they had left him behind and moved away.  For anyone who has ever thought that booting a pet out the back door and then driving away is an acceptable way to deal with the inconvenience of relocating with a pet, this is the story of what happens to those pets after their family roars off in the car.

            Paco had been abandoned in February, which as usual, is cold.  He had a fairly rotund physique that suggested that his former life had involved a lot of lying around on the couch, interrupted occasionally by yet another trip to the eternally full cat food  dish.  One can imagine that it was a bit of a shock for him to suddenly find himself, through no fault of his own, outside in sub-freezing temperatures without shelter, food or water.

            His fur was thoroughly covered with grease and grime, which suggested that he had been taking what shelter he could under cars.  In fact a cat can gather a little warmth if he sits inside the wheel well on top of  one of the front tires of a car whose engine is still warm from running.  Unfortunately, when someone comes out, starts the car up, and drives off the cat gets dumped off the back of the tire and is then run over.

            Paco had serious trauma to his head.  His jaw had been broken and dislocated so that it was forced open and he was unable to close it.  His left eye was full of blood, and he had blood caked all over his nose and the inside of  his mouth.  In spite of his injuries he was still ambulatory, and was trying his best in the exam room to be friendly. 

            We loaded him up with as much pain medication as we could give him and started IV fluids.  There weren’t resources enough to do an exhaustive evaluation, but he appeared stable enough in the afternoon to anesthetize him and try to replace his jaw and place a feeding tube to help with his recovery. 

            Although initially the repairs seemed successful, by the next day Paco had developed several complications that were clearly causing him intense pain and his condition nosedived to the point that there was little hope of saving him.  By the evening we had to make the decision to euthanize him rather than let this sweet cat suffer any more.

            As horrible as his death was, Paco was actually luckier than many abandoned pets.  At least he had the benefit of a warm place, pain medication and a peaceful end because someone found him and got help for him.  The more common scenario for an  injured abandoned pet involves crawling off under a bush or a house and slowly dying in agony in the cold from shock, dehydration, and starvation.

            This exact scenario is why the Humane Society exists.  In all honesty Paco would probably have ended up being euthanized there because older pets don’t stand as much of a chance of being adopted, so dumping him there is a lazy and callous way for owners to free themselves of their obligation to their pets, but at least he wouldn’t have been starved, frozen, and mangled by a car before he died.