Providing Your Pet With Quality Emergency Care

Broken glass is extremely dangerous, but since the average home has plenty of glass in it, it's quite possible for you or a loved one to be injured by broken glass in an accident. Unfortunately, this could include your cat. It's important to act fast to take care of your cat in an incident like this. If it ever happens to your cat, this is what you should do.

Don't Remove Glass

It's seemingly common sense to remove the thing that's caused the injury, but you shouldn't. Removing the glass if it's still embedded in your cat's skin could speed up the bleeding process.

While the glass is in place, it's blocking off the areas of the body that it pierced. As soon as it's moved or removed, capillaries, veins, and arteries can start bleeding freely again. So if at all possible, leave the glass in place.

Limit Motion

There are two major dangers here facing your cat. The first is the danger that they themselves will try to pull the glass out by biting or licking it. This is obviously a severe danger, as your cat could cut their mouth or tongue, or worse yet, consume the glass.

If you have one, immediately put an e-collar on your cat after this happens. However, if you don't, you're going to want to move on to the next step.

The second danger facing your cat is that while they still have the glass in their body, any movement could potentially drive it further in. So you need to limit their motion as much as possible.

To do this, you'll need to swaddle your cat. Using a big towel or blanket, lay it out, set your cat onto it, and then carefully wrap the blanket around your cat's body. Avoid the area where the glass is. After your cat is snugly wrapped, take any excess and loosely drape it over the top of the glass. This will keep your cat from wiggling and will prevent them from being able to eat or lick the glass.

Get To Vet

It's an absolute necessity that you head to the vet's office as soon as you've completed the first two steps. Your cat's vet will need to operate to remove the glass, including any small bits that may have broken off. Once that's finished, they'll flush the wound to help prevent an infection, and finish up by stitching the wound closed.

Your cat may be sent home with antibiotics and may also need to come back to the vet's office to have its stitches removed. Your vet will fill you in on the details.

For more information about emergency pet care, contact a clinic like Animal Emergency Clinic.