Yesterday evening a fellow rescue worker brought me a four-week old kitten in need of medical care. He was lethargic and dehydrated and covered in fleas; his groin was completely covered by maggots.
I washed him off and administered Frontline to kill the fleas, which I mistakenly thought were the greater danger. Once he'd been bathed I examined his belly and found a pinhole-sized puncture wound, to which I applied a triple antibiotic ointment. The kitten appeared otherwise to be healthy.
The next morning I found more maggots and two more "puncture" wounds immediately above his anus, which as I hydrated the kitten began to suppurate. The kitten was immediately transported to a veterinarian and unfortunately had to be euthanized.
The reason for that was that the maggots had literally burrowed into the kitten's guts to eat and had created an infection the kitten from which could not have recovered.
The common view of maggots is that they eat only dead tissue and can help clean out a wound--this is only partially true. They do not stop with the dead tissue and will burrow into healthy tissue, creating infection.
Had the wounds been on a leg it could possibly have been amputated, but the maggots had entered the kitten's lower GI tract--there was nothing else that could be done.
Since we are at the peak of kitten season and the weather conditions now favor flies this is something each of us should be aware of and watch for--it is life-threatening for kittens....
I washed him off and administered Frontline to kill the fleas, which I mistakenly thought were the greater danger. Once he'd been bathed I examined his belly and found a pinhole-sized puncture wound, to which I applied a triple antibiotic ointment. The kitten appeared otherwise to be healthy.
The next morning I found more maggots and two more "puncture" wounds immediately above his anus, which as I hydrated the kitten began to suppurate. The kitten was immediately transported to a veterinarian and unfortunately had to be euthanized.
The reason for that was that the maggots had literally burrowed into the kitten's guts to eat and had created an infection the kitten from which could not have recovered.
The common view of maggots is that they eat only dead tissue and can help clean out a wound--this is only partially true. They do not stop with the dead tissue and will burrow into healthy tissue, creating infection.
Had the wounds been on a leg it could possibly have been amputated, but the maggots had entered the kitten's lower GI tract--there was nothing else that could be done.
Since we are at the peak of kitten season and the weather conditions now favor flies this is something each of us should be aware of and watch for--it is life-threatening for kittens....
