Lulu is a young stray cat that Jerome Humane Society found out about. She had been injured 2 weeks earlier and had severe trauma on her face. Jerome called us and we got her on the same day. The jaw was fractured in multiple places and was dislocated ½ inch to the right. It smelled so bad as it was severely infected. She was only 5 pounds as she had not been eating anything but churro paste that a lady visiting from out of town gave her. She was severely emaciated and dehydrated and almost septic from the infection.
I decided surgery would probably end her life, but I learned a trick from a specialist a while ago on how to fix a dislocated jaw. We sedated her with a safe dose to make her comfortable, gave her IV fluids to rehydrate her, a pain injection, an antibiotic injection, and then reduced the dislocated jaw with a wooden pencil. The procedure is to gently close the cat’s mouth onto the pencil on the side of the dislocation and roll the pencil in the direction you want the lower jaw to go. It pops back into place in seconds with no surgery.
I then put Mirtazapine appetite stimulant on her ear as it comes in a transdermal paste for cats. I fed her canned critical nutrition hospital food 3-4 times a day and started her on the strongest antibiotic I had for a cat with that bad of an infection. It is a liquid, and I only had to give it once a day for 7 days. The first day, she let me pet her head gently, and as the week progressed, she was head-butting me and letting me scratch her all over.
A day after I got her, I called the woman who dropped her off to ask what all they had fed her. She said that Lulu scratched her on her arm, and she did not see it nor clean it and had to go to the ER. She said the doctor told her that rabies was 100% fatal and that the cat could have rabies. She wanted me to send Lulu’s head in for rabies testing if she was not going to make it. I told her we did not have any recent confirmed rabies cases, and she was scratched, not bitten. She was convinced and adamant about quarantine of Lulu and calling her immediately if there were any symptoms. I advised her that she should concentrate on the infection from the scratch on her arm as that was most likely to cause her harm and not rabies. I said I would call her if there were any symptoms, but Lulu has been injured for 2 weeks already and is mentally fine. As soon as Lulu was better, I sent her back to Jerome with an approved foster mom to care for her and keep her safe. I hope she gets the best home. She is a love.
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