Vets try to save 'plasticine cat' with rare skin disease
Veterinarian Yulia Zhemer from the Tsentrovet clinic told NGS24.RU the incredible story of the illness and the attempts to save a British Shorthair cat named Tosha from death.
She said volunteers from Kansk brought the cat to them via a rideshare service. Its owner had died, leaving behind a minor child and the pet.
Caring people placed him in the Krasnoyarsk clinic to treat megacolon — a defect of the large intestine that causes painful constipation and can be fatal. However, doctors discovered the situation was much more tragic for this cat.
«This cat was already operated on by us about a year ago and now he has a recurrence of megacolon. But when we were already preparing for surgery, we suddenly found out there was another problem. His skin feels like modeling clay — soft and detaches with the slightest pressure with almost no bleeding. It’s as if he’s wearing a coat two sizes too big; it all sags, gathers on his paw like, for example, a stocking rolled down, and practically doesn’t stay on. And during intubation, a flap of skin detached from the cat where there was slight pressure from the manipulations. This, of course, greatly shocked the doctors; the anesthesiologist was so shocked and impressed that she couldn’t approach this cat for several days afterwards,» says Yulia Zhemer.
The doctors canceled the surgery, applied other methods of treating the rectum, and that helped. Then they began to figure out what was wrong with the quadruped’s skin.
«After consulting with colleagues from Moscow and St. Petersburg, and collecting the most detailed history, we diagnosed Tosha with a very rare disease: Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. This is a hereditary disease where the collagen enzyme is not produced completely. As a rule, it is incurable, and such cats don’t even live to middle age, but this one lived to five years old, and in a family with a child. Now everyone has abandoned him. And he is staying with us in the hospital, and we are doing everything to somehow treat him. We are stitching him up. Special clothing has been delivered for him,» says Yulia Zhemer.
According to Yulia Zhemer, Krasnoyarsk volunteers are collecting money and paying the bills for the cat’s treatment and hospital stay. But after the treatment ends, he will need a home.
«The cat looks like a patchwork quilt with us, but nevertheless he needs very gentle hands, incredibly gentle, soft, and an adaptive apartment. And he has no home, absolutely no home. And he, of course, is in very great need of help,» says Yulia Zhemer.
