It’s hands down the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, and boy do we see some weird stuff in emergency vet med!
When my nurse called me to say they were on their way, and tried to explain what was happening, I just didn’t get what she was saying. It didn’t make any sense!
Until the kittens came through the door and we could see for ourselves what was happening:
5 kittens had been born, normally. ONE of them for some reason was left with a longer umbilical cord, that SOMEHOW had tangled the other 4 kittens up.
So they presented as a ball of kittens, the size of a football, with their paws strangled by the cord at the CENTER of the ball, and some around their bodies.
It was so tight we could literally not see who was who and what was what. All kittens were meowing and wriggling, and at 2am my brain was not coping very well with this situation.
It looked like something out of a gory horror film 🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀
The odd thing is that my nurse HAD seen this before (what are the odds of that?? Have YOU seen anything like this??), in a litter she was fostering, but she caught it early and could easily handle it.
THIS bundle of kittens, however, had been stuck together for hours and the cord was dry and stiff. Eventually I braved the tip of my scissors between a paw and what looked like the cord, hoping I wasn’t amputating a tail, and got the first snip in.
Then we were able to slowly unravel and keep cutting, but 3 paws looked like they may have been strangled too long. We gave them back to the owner and advised to keep an eye on, and may need amputating (but then again cats are so resilient so who knows?).
The moral of the story is: Don’t wait until you think you know it all to consider yourself a decent vet. You are NEVER going to have seen/heard/done it all. EVER.
Jump in with what you’ve got, and decide you’re going to try your best.
Results are something that can happen when the right conditions are met. Your job is to make the conditions as “right” as possible, not be the perfect vet (as you will never be).
Second: Decide upfront you’re not going to beat yourself up no matter the outcome. Tomorrow is another day, and all you have to do is show up decided to give it your best shot.
P.S: I’ve googled it since and seen a few cases out there - isn’t it funny I’ve been doing this for 20 years and never come across it before?!?!
P.P.S: Have YOU seen it before? Please comment and let me know, and how you resolved it 👀
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