Hi,
I'm more of a lurker here, but I've gotten good advice in the past and everyone is so helpful, I'm hoping someone can help me out today.
For the record, my cats are mostly indoors. Tora (the one involved in the incident today) sometimes gets to go outside on her leash and harness, but never unsupervised.
Here's what happened today:
I was at work today but DH was home and had the windows open (screens in). Tora was sitting in the window like she always does and all of sudden got really agitated and all of sudden, she pushed the window screen out and ran outside. Thankfully my DH was sitting right there and ran out the door after her. He caught up with her in the alley where she was in the middle of a cat fight with a big orange tom that hangs out around here. My DH was able ot break up the fight by yelling at the cats and the tom wandered off and my DH chased and finally caught up Tora and took her inside and locked her up while he fixed the screens. We can't find any wounds on her. There's no blood, no wet areas, no messed up fur areas, no swelling, no injuries that we can find at all. She's not paying more attention than usual to a certain spot and she's acting 100% normal. Her fur is not very thick so I'm fairly confident that nothing is being hidden by thick fur. She wasn't in the fight very long, according to my DH but he heard a lot of noise. The total time for all of this was about 3-5 minutes (from the time she popped the screen out to the time he got her back inside) according to my DH.
We also did a quick bath on her. Soaking the fur so we could see everything underneath more clearly and we still don't see anything.
I'm going to call my vet tomorrow, but how worried do I have to be? She just had her rabies vaccine and her distemper combo is good for 3 years (boostered in 2007). I know FIV is a concern, she was negative when I adopted her and lives 99% of her life indoors. How soon after this fight can I test her for FIV? What else do we have to worry about/test for?
I've done a real through exam on her and I don't see any wounds but I will still probably take her into the vet and have him check her out.
Crazy cat, she wants so bad to be an outdoor kitty but I keep trying to tell her that those other outdoor kitties will kick her butt. We're lucky that my DH was home. We didn't realize that the screens didn't lock in place so we will definitely be making a change to the screens and our window opening policy with this crazy cat.
Thanks for any suggestions
Sara
I'm more of a lurker here, but I've gotten good advice in the past and everyone is so helpful, I'm hoping someone can help me out today.
For the record, my cats are mostly indoors. Tora (the one involved in the incident today) sometimes gets to go outside on her leash and harness, but never unsupervised.
Here's what happened today:
I was at work today but DH was home and had the windows open (screens in). Tora was sitting in the window like she always does and all of sudden got really agitated and all of sudden, she pushed the window screen out and ran outside. Thankfully my DH was sitting right there and ran out the door after her. He caught up with her in the alley where she was in the middle of a cat fight with a big orange tom that hangs out around here. My DH was able ot break up the fight by yelling at the cats and the tom wandered off and my DH chased and finally caught up Tora and took her inside and locked her up while he fixed the screens. We can't find any wounds on her. There's no blood, no wet areas, no messed up fur areas, no swelling, no injuries that we can find at all. She's not paying more attention than usual to a certain spot and she's acting 100% normal. Her fur is not very thick so I'm fairly confident that nothing is being hidden by thick fur. She wasn't in the fight very long, according to my DH but he heard a lot of noise. The total time for all of this was about 3-5 minutes (from the time she popped the screen out to the time he got her back inside) according to my DH.
We also did a quick bath on her. Soaking the fur so we could see everything underneath more clearly and we still don't see anything.
I'm going to call my vet tomorrow, but how worried do I have to be? She just had her rabies vaccine and her distemper combo is good for 3 years (boostered in 2007). I know FIV is a concern, she was negative when I adopted her and lives 99% of her life indoors. How soon after this fight can I test her for FIV? What else do we have to worry about/test for?
I've done a real through exam on her and I don't see any wounds but I will still probably take her into the vet and have him check her out.
Crazy cat, she wants so bad to be an outdoor kitty but I keep trying to tell her that those other outdoor kitties will kick her butt. We're lucky that my DH was home. We didn't realize that the screens didn't lock in place so we will definitely be making a change to the screens and our window opening policy with this crazy cat.
Thanks for any suggestions
Sara
