The cat with a faint fishy breadth

Over the years, Singapore stray cats seem to prevail despite the proactive actions of the cat catchers.  They are commonly seen in the vicinity of eating places in the Housing and Development Board flats.  They just love fish and many of them have survived on table scraps which will have fish bones.  A few do get fish bones stuck in their throats and their fate depends much on the care of a small number of kind women who will bring them to seek veterinary treatment.

Mrs Johnson was one of those kind people who would help stray cats in distress.   "It had saliva dripping continuously from its mouth for the past two days and its coat is so dirty as it could not groom itself" said Mrs Johnson.  All normal cats kept themselves clean by self grooming.   

"It had stopped eating too" Mrs Johnson continued.  "It had been spayed, but  it still went out daily."  The cat's coat looked very clean. Maybe Mrs Johnson had bathed it. 

Fish bones in the cat's throat are a first diagnosis as this is a common veterinary complaint.   "Most likely, a fish bone lodged inside its mouth," I said as I pried open the cat's mouth.

I thought it was an easy case as most times I could see the vertebral bone stuck in the back of the throat.  Sometimes, I could just take a pair of forceps and pulled the bone out before the cat could object further.

This cat's eyes showed fear as its right paw swiped at me as I opened its mouth.  The mouth looked clean as you could see from the picture on the left.  The black diamond spot on the roof of the mouth, called the hard palate, directed my vision downwards towards pharynx where  the windpipe and gullet open in the same area.

No fish bones were seen. Could it be further done the throat?  No pain was felt down the throat area and so there could be no bone which should have caused considerable pain when I palpated the gullet region.

If you had swallowed a small piece of fish bone, you would have understood how the cat felt.  In the 1960s era, homemaker mothers used to steam or fry a kind of very good tasting fish with numerous very fine bones and it was painful condition whenever one small one got caught in the throat.  You would want to cough it out.  But this cat was not coughing anything out. Its presenting signs were a lot of saliva being produced.

There was no bone seen on this fast inspection. The cat had no fever. It needed to be tranquilised.

"Although it is a stray cat, my wife could not sleep for the last two nights as she worried for the cat's health," said Mr Johnson who took time off to attend to this stray cat.  Mrs Johnson, in a pink blouse and a white floral pants had stopped her shopping to bring the cat to get the fish bone out.

She took the cat out of the cage but she could not restrain the cat for the tranquiliser injection. It leapt off the examination table with its tail swishing back and forth as it felt the prick of a needle.  Some stray cats are wary of strangers.  They live in the law of the jungle fighting with each other and being abused by naughty boys.

"It is best not to hold on to the cat for me to tranquilise as you might get scratched," I said.  Mrs Johnson, a sun-tanned very slim woman looking younger than her age was very conscious of her looks and it would be no good if the cat scratched her hands or face in the process of tranquilisation. She had plastic surgery in Brazil, before coming to Singapore. I guess it was as common as practice as the Singapore ladies of means or tais tais going to their facials.      

What should I do with this alert and wild acting cat now?  Nurse Ann put it inside a cage and stacked the cage with four phone books one on top of each other, pushed the books against the cat.  It was cornered. I gave a jab through the wire mesh of the cage.  It jumped as I injected and therefore received half the dosage required.  It was not tightly cornered and could still spring away when injected.   

15 minutes after tranquilisation, I put it on the surgery table, opened its mouth and examined it under the spotlight of the operating lamp.  I pulled out its touch so that I could see further down its throat.   


The cat was still resisting as it felt the pressure of the tongue being pulled outwards to its maximal length.  No bones were seen. Maybe it was a small one lodged at the side of the tonsils. I probed the pharynx with the forceps.  The cat was still aware of the process of forceps at its pharynx and snapped its jaws as it pulled inwards its tongue. 

"It will need some anaesthetic gas," I told Nurse Ann.  The gas mask was applied and the cat dozed off in deeper sleep.  Nothing was seen. Absolutely nothing. Clean. Not even a bleeding spot or ulcer. Nurse Ann strained her neck to look into the mouth.  She was holding the jaws open and there was not apparently no bones.  It was already some ten minutes of my examination.  Nurse Ann who had handled more cases than she could remember, said confidently: "The cat has no fish bone." 

There was no intense pain unlike some of those other cases when I probed its throat with the forceps. Perhaps the bone had been dislodged as the cat was not salivating when it was brought in.

There was a faint fishy breadth from the cat's mouth as I looked closer at its mouth.   This cat had not eaten for the past two days and all food would have left the stomach.  This fishy breath, a very faint aroma which wafted up my nose when I was very close to the cat was unusual. 

This fishy smell appeared to be a clue to the presence of something associated with the fish.   My eye vision were tunneled onto the throat and downwards into the pharynx.  The cat was waking up from the tranquiliser and would need more anaesthetic gas.  It was already 15 minutes of examination. 

Mrs Johnson said that the cat had salivated this morning and was not grooming.  A normal cat would groom itself.  I re-examined the mouth again. The lower half was clean. Then, the bone stared at me in the face.Did you see the bone readers?  Go back to the first image and compare to the last one on the right. Click on the thumbnails and see the bigger picture. 
  
 

The fish bone was camouflaged inside the mouth. It was about 1.3 inches long and consisted of small vertebrae bones with long pieces on either sides and were  lodged between the upper right and left molar teeth, across the hard palate. It was in an unusual location as fish bones in the stray cat are usually found in the back of the mouth, not on the roof!

"Can you keep the cat at home all the time? Do you know that if the government cat catcher captures your stray cat, it will be the end of her." I asked Mrs Johnson. Stray cats are euthanased when impounded by the government cat catchers.

Mrs Johnson was very happy that the bone was removed. "It keeps meowing to go out. This cat is the restless type although it had been spayed" said Mrs Johnson. "We live only once.  Its the quality of life, that's important than being caged in the penthouse.  If it is caught by the government officers, it is her fate.  I will ask those people at the market not to feed it fish."

Her driver drove the green Jaguar up the surgery. This was one stray cat which could live a comfortable sheltered life in Mrs Johnson's penthouse, admiring the sea views of the ships and tankers and enjoying the sea breezes which slammed shut open doors. The best canned food provided for.

Instead, it preferred to live in the law of the jungle establishing its territorial rights in the wet market of Marine Parade, tasting the scraps of fish thrown by people.  It   does not prefer to live a dull and long life in a concrete jungle of over 800 condominiums and lots of people. 


July 4, 2001
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