Educational tips for pet lovers

Last chance for the Mother Cat to Live

There was a big commotion at the stuffy fifty-year-old Kim Keat wet market as the government people came to enforce the laws of public health and order. 

Illegal hawkers had to flee for their lives as they wrapped up their wares and dashed for safety. The officers, in light brown shirt and brown pants would give chase and being younger, would have the advantage of stamina and energy. They overcame the sixty-year-old peddler who could only limp and brought him back to the van. 

Mrs Tan was a licensed stall holder, working half a day selling pork, pig's brains, tongue and lungs. All these would be delivered at dawn by trucks from the Jurong Abbattoir. The pigs were slaughtered starting from the evening and the meat and offals would be delivered just before dawn, except on Mondays. There was no slaughter on Sunday evenings. Fresh pork was what the average Singaporean house wife liked. Besides they cost less than those beautifully plastic-wrapped at the air conditioned supermarkets. As much as thirty percent less, but younger women with higher income shun the blood and fishy smells of the wet market. 

Mrs Tan was alert. The government officers from the Primary Production Department could be conducting raids on stray dogs and cats too. She was a 50-year-old matronly woman, wearing a maroon small-flowered blouse with short sleeves and slacks made of polyester, a fashion popular with her generation of "Ah So".   "Ah So" is a Singapore Cantonese term meaning "Auntie" referring to Chinese women over forty, many of whom worked as office cleaners or stayed at home looking after the children and making sure they studied hard to improve their position in life. 

Today, she spotted the dog and cat catchers who probably happened to be at work. The Environment officers distracted her. She quickly rounded up the mother cat with three kittens and hid them inside a cabinet. They were safe for the time being. But something was wrong with the mother cat and she went to the veterinarian when the government officials had left.       


"This cat vomited a few minutes after eating canned food this morning," said Mrs Tan said. "As if  there was something stuck in its throat.  She is mothering three kittens. I suspect it had swallowed a fish bone."

Fish vertebral bones trapped inside a cat's throat were a common veterinary complaint amongst stray cats in Singapore and stray cat lovers diagnosed the problem usually correctly. 

These cats ate leftover food including fish bones as they wait patiently near the dining tables of the hawker centre near the wet market stalls. 

The mother cat was not a fierce cat but was nervous and tried to escape from the strange surroundings and pungent antiseptic smells of a veterinary surgery. I gripped its upper jaw with my thumb and forefinger forcing her mouth to open. I could see no bones in the two seconds the cat was caught unaware. Her left paw dug into my hand to stop further exploration from the stranger. I felt the pain of the long three-inch claw scratch and stopped manipulation. The mother cat was still strong.   

The treatment of stray cats was no different from other cats but there was the need to reduce veterinary cost to the lowest.  

I had no choice but to give a tranquiliser injection as it was difficult to open its mouth wide for examination. This tranquiliser caused the cat to vomit out the canned food but there was no bones or their fragments.   No fish bone was seen lodged in the back of the mouth.  I used a pair of forceps to press down the tongue. There was no fish bone seen inside the back of its throat.  

Sometimes, the bone would be trapped across the back of the throat causing difficulty in swallowing and I could see them. In this case, the bone must be deeper down, past the tonsils. This cat was eating.  I saw blood clots at the back edges of the tongue. There was slight bleeding. This was due to the fish bone or bones piercing the tongue as the mother cat attempted to swallow it?

"Good news," I said to Mrs Tan. "There is no fish bone stuck in the throat, but an X-ray would be need to show the presence of any bone."  The cat could vomit out its feed indicating no obstruction of the gullet. It was alert and had no fever. A false alarm. Case closed.  

Mrs Tan reiterated: "It had this choking sound when it vomited its food this morning. As if it had great difficulty in vomiting." 

This was going to be a difficult case or a challenging one if you subscribed to positive mental attitude management concept. The classical textbook description of gullet or esophageal obstruction was difficulty in swallowing food.  The cat had no problem swallowing its food as evident by a large amount of canned food vomited out, a side effect of the xylazine tranquiliser.

Could the bone be inside the gullet in this case? Sort of lodged sideways so that food could still be swallowed but would be vomited out a few minutes later as most of the food, blocked by the bone could not reach the stomach? A projectile type of vomiting a few minutes after eating would be a sign of gullet obstruction.  

Extending the cat's head upwards, four cm down the throat, a small swelling could be seen on closer inspection. It was below the 'Adam's apple'. 

The cat objected to the hard bony lump being palpated by me. It was painful even under tranquiliser's pain killer effect.  Yes, a bone was lodged very near to the epiglottis, the flap covering the airway opening when food is swallowed.  That would explain why the cat could swallow some food as the opening of the gullet was not obstructed.  

This was an instant diagnosis. What Mrs Tan needed was an instant economical solution.  

"It would need an X-ray and surgery to remove the bone," I said.  It would be too dangerous to pull out the bone as the bone would slice through the walls of the gullet and cause considerable damage. It might even pierce the big blood vessels if I take it out with the forceps."

"This is a stray cat." Mrs Tan said. What was not said was that there should be minimal costs to the stray cat Samaritan who brought in the cat for treatment. Preferably,  the vet should provide a charitable service as a stray cat was nobody's responsibility.  

If the bone was hard to remove by forceps, the cat needed surgery and Mrs Tan had to pay. The total cost of surgery, X-rays and hospitalization was estimated at around $500 which was half a month's pay for many clerks.  This was not a lot of money for Mrs Tan whose business had been affected by the economic downturn.  People seemed to spend less and were more cautious with money.

Most stray cats don't get veterinary treatment as there is no free clinic for small animals in Singapore.  

"I am worried about its kittens not being given milk if the cat undergoes surgery and would be unfit to nurse the kittens. Somebody at the hawker centre had dumped her earlier litter of kittens into the garbage dump."  Mrs Tan said sadly. 

"My husband forbids me from bringing any cat home."  So she could not hand feed the kittens every two hourly. 

"Are you going to leave it at the hawker centre after surgery and it may get another fish bone jammed inside its throat later on?"  I asked. 

This was a pragmatic question with no answer.  Even if Mrs Tan would pay for the surgery, who would look after the kittens since the mother cat would be unable to nurse the kittens for a few days? Milk production would stop too if the kittens don't suckle.  The kittens would starve to death since nobody had the time to bottle feed them.  

Ideally, this cat should be X-rayed to determine the position of the fish bone inside the gullet. It was not too far down the gullet and could be extracted with a  pair of forceps with risk of tissue damage and bleeding leading to infections and death of the mother cat. Yet, there were the three kittens which Mrs Tan could not bring home to bottle feed.  Groomer Ken could provide nursing services but the costs would be high.   

This was the last chance for the cat to live. If Mrs Tan walked out of the consultation room because I could not recommend her an economical solution, the mother cat would die from infection and loss of appetite. 

Bacteria would colonise the pricked throat area in the next few days. She suffered intense pain as she could not swallow food because the bone was jammed at the opening of the esophagus. Without eating, she would not be able to produce milk for the three kittens. The kittens would die. There were four lives at stake.    

What was the cheapest treatment besides X-rays and surgery?    

I put the cat under general anesthesia using a gas mask so that she would not feel the pain if I explored the deeper part of her throat. If the fish bone could be seen, it was easy to extract it out with a pair of forceps.  

I pulled the reddish tongue out as much as possible. There was no fish bone seen.  The cat still felt the pain when I put the forceps down the gullet.  

The protective cough and swallowing reflexes were overactive.  The fish bone obstructed the anaesthetic gas from entering the lungs. The bone must be large and it must have lodged above the air way. An X-ray would be the easy way to see the bone if costs were not the problem.  In real life, veterinary costs are a major concern of stray cat Samaritans.  


The gas anaesthetic would not work in such situations. I decided to give the cat the injectable anaesthetic. Nurse Ann pressed the right elbow of the cat with her thumb and fingers. The cephalic vein swelled in a short thin line on the side of the fore arm. 

I inject into it the short acting thiopentone barbiturate. The cat was now at peace, unconscious and pain free as it went into surgical anaesthesia.  

I inserted the curved end forceps into the pharynx, the area above the windpipe and gullet.  I felt something rough. Something big obstructing further entry.  I opened the jaws of the forceps and clamped blindly on something. 

The forceps locked on one tip of the fish bone. I could see the tip being blocked by the throat or pharyngeal tissue on the right side as I manipulated it out.  Slowly, I pulled out the bone. There was no blood seen in the bone. This was good news as it meant that the gullet tissues were not lacerated when I pulled it out.  I gave the cat an antibiotic injection.

"The mother cat should be all right." I said. Mrs Tan was very happy as she smiled.  She seldom talked much. 

"Why don't you bring her home for the next few days?" I advised. 

"My husband will divorce me if I bring the cat and kittens home," Mrs Tan explained gravely. "He does not like the cats to dirty the HDB (Housing & Development Board) flat."

Since she worked half a day, what would now happen to the cat?  Would she be too doped to feed her kittens?   Would the anaesthetic drugs affect the kittens as they suck the milk and kill them as their livers were immature enough to metabolize the barbiturate given to the mother and would now be excreted into the milk?

There were so many stray cats in this world to worry about.  Since the mother cat would be unsupervised, I suggested that it be kept in the surgery for 3 days.  At least Nurse Ann would care for them.   Mrs Tan bought the canned food for the cat and milk powder and bottle in case the kittens could not suckle. 

"I could not sleep the whole night when the cat had its fish bone removed," Mrs Tan said. "It was a stray cat but it was well loved by us at the hawker stalls. The other ladies were enquiring about her health. I would put her in a cage."

Two days later, Mrs Tan drove the Nissan pick up and brought her beloved cats to be cared for by everyone.  "How about sterilising her so that no more kittens would be produced?" I asked.  

"It is just too expensive an operation," Mrs Tan replied. "My pork business had been wiped out since the outbreak of Nipah virus in pigs in Malaysia. The people just avoided eating pork as they were worried about being infected by the virus and become comatose.  I hear that the government wants us to install meat chillers and that would cost a lot of money. If I can't afford it, I would be out of business. "

Stray cats are the unwanted animals of society.  "There are vouchers to get stray cats neutered free if you go to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to get them. You can bring the cat to be sterilised in veterinary clinics participating in the SPCA scheme." I advised.  

"In addition, spayed stray cats would have a small tip of their ears cut so that the cat catcher from the government would know they have been neutered and will would not take them away to be put to sleep," I elaborated.

Mrs Tan arched her pencilled lined eye brows and wrinkled her forehead.  She looked me in the eyes and did not comment. I knew she disbelieved my government propaganda of spayed cats being given a lease of life in a stray cat management and control scheme not much publicised.

"Would it not be better for your business if people don't spay the stray cat? After all, rentals, like bus fares keep increasing over the years and your net profits decrease accordingly. Bigger operations like hospitals and supermarkets overwhelm the small operators with the economies of scale, convenience  and therefore lower priced products and services. 


You will need more cases if you don't advocate the spaying of stray cats. The cats give birth to kittens. Some get adopted and some of the new owners here may patronise you." Mrs Tan said. 

Quite logical and correct. A down to earth business woman who did not need to get a Master of Business Administration to expound the laws of supply and demand a graduate who had more years of education which was narrow-based to animals.

She was correct. Less kittens born equal to less cat owners and ultimately much fewer cases for the vets to diagnose treat. What would a cat veterinarian do if there were no cats to treat? Go treat the lions?    

I could see that Mrs Tan did not believe when I said that spayed cats with a snipped off left ear tip would not be rounded up and taken away by the government cat catchers to be euthansed. The nemesis of stray cats come in armour-like trucks and the officers are eyed with great wary and suspicion.   

A neighbourhood watch group of Aunties would warn each other when the cat catcher has arrived so that the stray cats get kept safely hidden in the hawker cabinets.  

It is always a cat and mouse game between the stray cat protectors and the government cat catchers all over the world. The benign government cat catcher in Singapore wins many battles over the years but as long as he or she cannot win the hearts of all Aunties and their daughters making them stop caring for the strays, the war against stray cats will never be won. 

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