Hi all! I am new here, after someone on a gardening forum gave me a link to these forums. I will give you a little background about the cat I am concerned about before asking the question I am posting about.
We have been feeding an outdoor male orange tabby for a little under a year now - he kept coming up to our second story deck for food, as he had seen another feral cat doing that. That other cat was found dead by a neighbor in their yard last Fall, but this cat kept coming.
He is very friendly and we believe he must have belonged to someone originally because he loves attention and to be petted. About 2 weeks ago he went missing for 3 days, and came back to us very injured. He had a bad wound on his shoulder, and his ear was all torn up as it's been a few times before. Because we have 5 other indoor cats, we were not in the position to take him to the vet unfortunately, but very lucky to all concerned, I found a wonderful organization who agreed to take him on financially if we would foster him and hopefully keep him afterwards.
He was taken to the vet and neutered, and while there they found that he had such a bad urinary tract blockage that he would have been dead within 2 days from when they saw him - his bladder would have burst the vet said. They took care of that and we are now feeding him prescription food only and he is in a room next to our kitchen by himself, until he is totally wormed and a bit better.
All that is going well, but he also had some black "gunk" on the top of his tail near where the tail joins the body, when he came back to us outside. That same spot also looked flattened - I wondered if perhaps he had gotten run over by something? The vet told the people who are helping us, that it was secretions, and that that would stop after he is neutered. It's been a week since, and the black area is much larger than before.
Does anyone know if this is indeed secretions and will it stop after a while?
Or is this something else? I haven't seen him groom that area - though I am not in the room with him all the time. When he does groom in front of me it's been his front legs or the area that was stitched up on the wound. That area is pretty much all healed now thankfully.
We have been feeding an outdoor male orange tabby for a little under a year now - he kept coming up to our second story deck for food, as he had seen another feral cat doing that. That other cat was found dead by a neighbor in their yard last Fall, but this cat kept coming.
He is very friendly and we believe he must have belonged to someone originally because he loves attention and to be petted. About 2 weeks ago he went missing for 3 days, and came back to us very injured. He had a bad wound on his shoulder, and his ear was all torn up as it's been a few times before. Because we have 5 other indoor cats, we were not in the position to take him to the vet unfortunately, but very lucky to all concerned, I found a wonderful organization who agreed to take him on financially if we would foster him and hopefully keep him afterwards.
He was taken to the vet and neutered, and while there they found that he had such a bad urinary tract blockage that he would have been dead within 2 days from when they saw him - his bladder would have burst the vet said. They took care of that and we are now feeding him prescription food only and he is in a room next to our kitchen by himself, until he is totally wormed and a bit better.
All that is going well, but he also had some black "gunk" on the top of his tail near where the tail joins the body, when he came back to us outside. That same spot also looked flattened - I wondered if perhaps he had gotten run over by something? The vet told the people who are helping us, that it was secretions, and that that would stop after he is neutered. It's been a week since, and the black area is much larger than before.
Does anyone know if this is indeed secretions and will it stop after a while?
Or is this something else? I haven't seen him groom that area - though I am not in the room with him all the time. When he does groom in front of me it's been his front legs or the area that was stitched up on the wound. That area is pretty much all healed now thankfully.
