Degloving injury on 6 month old kitten - prognosis?

[OhBuggerandArse]

Our poor kitten must have been hit by a car this morning, and is at the vet's having fluids and painkillers and waiting for treatment. He wasn't gone more than an hour before I worried and went looking for him, and found him under a bush - he has degloving on both back legs, with the bone showing through, but apparently nothing broken.

Does anyone have any experience of this kind of injury and could talk me through what the management and recovery will be like?

I'd also really like to know what kind of accident could have caused this - whoever did it didn't stop, so I've no real idea what happened.

by degloving do you mean her skin is shinned down to the bone, the vet will probably be able to tell you more but i should imagine it will be like us when we skin ourselves bandages to allow the skin to recover ans antibiotics to stop any secondary infection can only think drag injury possibly as you say from a car

Update from the vet - she now thinks it was almost certainly a dog attack. Bite marks and puncture wounds, so a serious risk of infection which might be more dangerous than the skinning itself..

Dogs are never unaccompanied round here - so someone must have seen what happened. How mean not to try and help the cat and find the owner. Poor little thing - if I hadn't gone looking fro him he would probably have died of shock.

When, to the best of your knowledge, did he leave the house this morning? Or was he out overnight?

He was around with me at 9.30, and I started whistling for him a bit after 10 - when I found him around 11 he was further away than he'd usually go, so I don't know whether he didn't come then because he was far away, or because he'd already been hurt. So the maximum time he'd have been lying injured is about an hour and a half.

I'm thinking a hungry fox. It would be unusual at that time of day but not impossible. Vixens will have young litters at the moment and a kitten is of a size with one of their normal prey animals - rats.

Poor cat. Is he neutered? The full toms will roam.

I can imagine he will be sticking closer to home after this though.

With degloving injury establishing that there is good blood supply to the peripherals is the first thing without this prognosis is hopeless. If there is good blood supply you are looking at regular re bandaging with expensive specialist bandaging materials over a long period ( probably months). However, they do recover. My last degloving was a Rottweiler who lost 65% of the skin from one of her hind legs. Fortunately whilst she was a guard dog she was devoted to her owner and would lie back in his arms whilst each bandage session occurred. Four years later she is great and her leg is perfect. She is a very special patient.

Is that likely to be vet re-bandaging, Lone, or could it be done by an owner?

It's probably specialist dressings. It's a deep flat wound & they take longer to heal than a surgically incised wound.

Lordy. I hope the OP has insurance.

Vet re bandage it will be specialist dressings of a variety of types depending on the stage of wound healing.

Dogs are never unaccompanied round here - so someone must have seen what happened

Not necessarily, my old cat (no longer with us) had his tail de-gloved before I had a chance to get him neutered. He escaped one night unbeknown to us and as I suspected made a beeline for neighbours house (several unsprayed females) who also happened to keep a very large aggressive Alsation in the garden.
He jumped the fence and the dog got him, wasn't witnessed by anyone.

As I say it was just a suspicion at this stage. I later found out that one of the female cats at the house had given birth to three white kittens 9 weeks later. So given that I was the only owner of a white un-neutered male cat in the area and this was the only time he got out, then quite safe to say that this is in fact what happened.

Poor bugger had to have his tail amputated and was neutered at the same time.

So there is a possibility he has jumped the fence into someones garden but I guess you will never know for sure.
I do hope he makes a speedy recovery though, thoughts are with you and your little man.