Oscar Gets New Feet

This just in, from Round-The-Way-Gay, and ISBL correspondent, Neal:


A cat named Oscar, whose back feet were severed by a combine harvester--I know........YEEOW!--has been given two prosthetic limbs in a pioneering operation by Noel Fitzpatrick, a British veterinarian. The new feet are custom-made implants that "peg" the ankle to the foot, and are bioengineered to mimic the way deer antler bone grows through the skin.
Oscar was referred to Fitzpatrick by his local vet in Jersey, following the accident last October when Oscar was struck by the combine harvester whilst dozing in the sun.
The prosthetic pegs, called intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthetics [ITAPS] were developed by a team from University College London led by Professor Gordon Blunn and his team, who worked in partnership with Fitzpatrick to develop these weight-bearing implants.
Mr Fitzpatrick explained: "The real revolution with Oscar is [that] we have put a piece of metal and a flange into which skin grows into an extremely tight bone...[and]...We have managed to get the bone and skin to grow into the implant and we have developed an 'exoprosthesis' that allows this implant to work as a see-saw on the bottom of an animal's limbs to give him effectively normal gait."
You go Oscar!
And watch him go!
But stay away from naps in the fields and combines.

Tuesday Tuxedo

I loves me some Tuxedo.

We rescued him from a life as a blood donor in an animal hospital in Miami. They said he was mean; unadoptable....is that a word? Nothing but trouble. And he was, for the first few days.

Now, four years later he's a loving cat who follows you around the house, sits in the kitchen when you cook, and plays catch the reflection in the bathroom before we go to bed.

He's my boy. I call him 'My boy' just to irk Carlos, and it does.

But anyway, enough of the love story between me and el gato. What I wanted to point out was how he sits at the top of the chair in our home office; his hind claws dug in for support and his front legs dangling down either side.

Cute. Right?

Not so much. He sits like that because he was declawed by a veterinarian who thought it might make him a better candidate for adoption. You know, less mean and aggressive. So they cut off his fingers; cat's claws are not like our finger nails, they are like our fingers. Cats use them to scratch and groom themselves, to pick up things, to play with things, and for protection. Cutting off his fingers wasn't a good idea. It didn't make him less aggressive, it made him more aggressive because now he has only his back feet and claws to use as a defense.

So, if you have a cat or want a cat, don't, don't, don't, let anyone talk you into cutting off their fingers. If you want to declaw a cat because you have a leather sofa, or pretty velvet drapes, then either get rid of the cat or get rid of the couch and drapes. Or, do like Carlos and I have done, train your cats that they cannot claw the furniture.

Because, even though they don't show it, they are listening.

Tuxedo. He's a cutie. My boy.