Sept 24,2007 Who Shot Berry The Cat?

At 8 AM on this past August 31st Chuck and Virginia let their cat, Berry, outside. Berry loves to take a morning walk through the weeds on the hillside up behind the Golden Arts Jewelry Store on Snake River Avenue in Lewiston. Berry came back, as usual, 25 minutes later. When Chuck picked him up he noticed a fresh wound on Berry's hip. The first thing he thought of was a bullet wound.

They knew Berry was not acting like himself but when they brought him to the clinic that morning he didn't look too bad. His lungs and heart sounded normal and when I felt has belly, and moved his legs he showed little, if any, sign of pain. Most of the time, a wound on a dog or cat that the owner thinks was caused by a bullet turns out to be a bite from another dog or cat, respectively. (If a dog bites a cat, there is usually much more damage than a little puncture wound, and if a cat bites a dog, there is usually more damage, when all is said and done, to the cat.)

But Chuck, like most pet owners, knows his pets, and since he thought something more serious was going on, we took some X-Rays. There was a pellet but not in Berry's hip. It was in his belly. The pellet had penetrated the hip and tore through muscles, between bones, and ended up in the middle of Berry's abdomen, amidst the bladder, intestines, liver, kidneys and spleen. There was almost certainly life threatening damage done and we needed to do immediate surgery.

The first thing we found was a jagged hole in the small intestine. The pellet had gone in one side of the intestine and out the other. A thin sheet of tissue in the abdomen called "omentum" had already started doing its job. The omentum was attracted to the wound by inflammatory "hormones." Like a patch on a tire, it covered over the pellet holes and the contamination around them.

We searched diligently through Berry's abdomen, the large and small intestines, under the kidneys and liver, and everywhere, but found no pellet. Finally, when I picked up loop of small intestine, I happened to feel a little hard lump inside it. A close examination, inch by inch, "upstream" from the lump finally revealed another smaller hole. The pellet had gone through the first segment of intestine, in one side and out the other, and then through only one side of the second segment, winding up inside. The natural muscular contractions of the intestine moved the pellet downstream. It was easy to "milk" the pellet back upstream to the hole, and pull it out with a small forceps.

The holes had to be closed with tiny "purse string" sutures. The piece of contaminated omentum, like a dirty bandage, had to be removed. Then everything was rinsed clean with warm sterile saline solution, and we sewed Berry's belly up. After lots of antibiotics, and TLC from Chuck and Virginia, his stitches were removed. Berry seems to have completely recovered from his brush with the great reaper.

We only hope the parents of the presumed adolescent that tried to kill Berry will read this. Besides Chuck and Virginia's veterinary expenses and emotional trauma, and Berry's pain and suffering, irresponsible shooting has another consequence. Regardless of how you feel about it, every incident like this pushes public opinion a little more towards gun control. And, as Michael Vick has learned, public opinion of those who care about animals can be a powerful force.