All I Know is What I Know: Tiny Tim

Tiny Tim was brought to our clinic as an itty bitty kitten in December of 2009. He was found as a stray and a Community Service Officer brought him to be checked out. You see, Tiny Tim had no rear feet. There were open infected stumps where his feet should be. His right rear leg went to the ankle, but his left rear leg only made it a little past the kneee. We aren't sure what happened. Were they chewed off, perhaps by his mother? Was he born that way? If only he could talk...

No matter. He was a cute little guy and of course I couldn't put him to sleep. So we told the grateful CSO that we would take him on and try to find him a home. He spent about a week at the clinic on antibiotics and then my associate vet surgically closed the open stumps. A few weeks later I had to go in and shorten the shorter leg because it wasn't healing right.

Once we thought he was going to be ok, we put the word out that he needed a home. As is always the case, it took about 10 minutes for someone to adopt him. I often joke that the best way to find a home for a pet is to cut off one of its legs. In this instance, Tiny Tim was doubly lucky!

We got to watch Tiny Tim grow into a not-so-tiny adult cat. At his home, he gets around just fine on his stumps, and uses his front legs to help pull him up onto furniture. However, last month Tiny Tim stopped using his shorter leg and was diagnosed with a luxating patella (where his kneecap comes out of its groove) as well as an infection at the tip of the stump. I consulted with two veterinary surgeons, and even my human orthopedic surgeon (the one who operated on my elbow) and decided that I should shorten the stump to just above the knee, removing the kneecap as well. However, this is not a commonly done procedure; normally we amputate the rear leg at the hip or just below, as dogs and cats don't tend to do well with stumps for legs. However, Tiny Tim has been doing so good on his stumps that I wanted to give his left rear leg a chance.

So, today I did a partial amputation of Tiny Tim's left rea leg, taking it off just above the knee. Below are some photos of the procedure, and a warning for the squeamish. Despite a bunch of pain medicaiton, Tiny is pretty unhappy right now, but hopefully he'll thank me in a couple of days. If he does well, I just may write this up as a case report for publication... the Stromberg Technique for Distal Femoral Hindlimb Amputation in a Cat...

Tiny Tim as a baby