Meet Charlie, our Pismo Beach Veterinary Clinic Pet of the Week. Charlie is an indoor/outdoor kitty who one day came wandering in from outside with what looked like fishing line embedded in his tail. On initial exam, the long strand of apparent fishing line dove deep down into his tail, but no hook was evident. We anesthetized him to clean him up and get a closer look. The first odd thing we noticed was that Charlie had several bite wounds on his body (including his head and front leg). Once anesthetized, it was apparent that the end of the “fishing line” did not lead to a hook, but was actually a long, dried out tendon (we think) from his tail! We couldn’t pull out the hook, because it was connected to his body!
The best our forensics abilities could determine, was that he got in a cat fight, got bit a few times on the front end, and then got clawed on the tail during the scuffle. The claw from the other cat must have just hooked into his tail in a way that perfectly and cleanly snagged the tendon, stretched it and ripped it out, leaving a long laceration in the top of the tail and about a foot long “fishing line” dangling from it!
We have never seen this happen before so we were all surprised by the finding. Although this posting is late, it was perfect timing for a strange event as it happened Halloween weekend.
We’ve already seen Charlie back for his recheck to remove the sutures from his surgery. He’s recovering just fine and his tail looks great (still wags and all). If you’re not too grossed out yet, here are some photos:
