Indy and Ginger’s PTSD

Both Indy and Ginger were traumatised by their fight.

Even though Ginger won the fight, he appeared to be in a daze after that. He only ate a little bit of lunch and spent the whole afternoon sleeping. By evening, he was somewhat back to his normal habits again. We noticed that there was a very faint scratch above his eye. Well, Indy is known to attack the eyes when in defense mode. He’s done that to quite a few cats before and Indy is super accurate. Maybe with age, Indy has lost his bullseye touch (which is good!). Many years ago, Indy scratched Cow’s eye so badly until Cow needed two eye surgeries before it miraculously healed. That was a very deep scratch. Indy had also scratched Bunny’s eye before. Our male cats are all super alpha fighters.

Ginger was a very mild-mannered cat when he first came to us. But look at him now – also a super alpha.

Luckily Ginger was able to eat his dinner. In fact, he was hungry an hour before their usual dinner time and came to ask for an early dinner.

I think Ginger managed to sleep off his PTSD.

As for Indy, I had to put the soft e-collar on him all afternoon and that was rather stressful for him. He did not even sleep. And when I took off the e-collar after dinner, he quickly went off to urinate. Poor guy. The e-collar must have felt really alien on him, so he didn’t dare to do anything.

I did not expect Indy to eat yet as he had totally skipped lunch. I had to force-feed him a little bit of food so that I could give him his antibiotics. Indy also has gastro-intestinal issues, so I didn’t want him getting gastritis because of an empty stomach.

I was quite pleasantly surprised that Indy was able to lick some food on his own. Not much, but at least he can on his own, which is a bonus. I thought I’d probably have to force-feed him for a few days.

He wanted to groom himself so badly, so I let him. I figured the longer I leave the e-collar on, the more stressed out he would be. It is using the e-collar to prevent him from licking his wounds vs taking it off so that he feels more comfortable, more normal and is able to at least sleep and rest well. Resting well is also paramount to his recovery and healing. So I decided to only use the e-collar after applying the Fucidin cream onto his wounds. After that, it would be off. We will play it by ear.

Indy is also no longer limping now, so that’s good.

As expected, the wounds are healing superficially very fast. That’s the problem with cat bites. The wounds will heal superficially and trap the bacteria inside. Without oral antibiotics, various problems might arise from the bacteria festering under the skin. It can lead to abscesses which may require lancing or surgery. We’ve dealt with those issues before when Cow and Bunny were young.