Admittance date: 7th February 2023
We had a call about Stroud who was already a regular in the garden of the caller, unfortunately we’ve been so busy we had no traps available. Luckily, there was a large catio in the garden so we agreed that if Stroud could be enticed into there we would take him in. We thought this may take a few days, however just a few hours later Stroud was contained! Very lucky for him, as even though he has a reasonable amount of fur he still had large areas of mangey/crusty skin, he was dehydrated and quite lethargic. In addition, we noticed that he had lost several inches of his tail and the whole tail from end to end was completely covered in crust about a centimetre thick! We spent about 20 mins carefully removing all this thick crust so we could get a better look at what was going on, which revealed several breaks in the skin and the tail felt warm which indicated possible infection.
Because mangey skin is particularly prone to infection our vets very kindly fit him in for an appointment straight away and he was put on a course of antibiotics. Infection in the tail is always a worry as it can easily get into the bones of the tail and track up into the spine. Luckily for Stroud, someone cared, called us and got him contained, or his prognosis would have been very poor indeed.