Wound on cat's leg.

Dr. Marie replied:

Sorry to hear that Sydney has an injury. This is a tough question to answer without seeing the injury.

I do find that in most cases, a wound like this will need antibiotics stronger than the topical bacitracin. You're right, it doesn't sound like it is infected. But an open wound like this can very easily get infected. I am a little bit concerned about the pink center...if this gets darker or starts to have some discharge then he's definitely going to need some antibiotics and you will definitely need to see the vet for that.

A wound that is this size could possibly need surgery to heal. But, I have found that most cats are pretty good at healing up even large wounds provided they don't get infected.

I'm not a huge fan of bandaging cat legs as sometimes I find that we can do more harm than good with the bandage.

So, what do we do? Ultimately the advice that is best is to have a vet look at Sydney. If there is infection (and sometimes it's hard to tell), if we wait too long, it may need either a very long course of antibiotics or a hospital stay with intravenous antibiotics.

If this is not a possibility for you, one thing that often helps speed up the healing of a wound is something called hydrotherapy. This is, if Sydney will allow it. What you do is put him in the bathtub or sink and use a an attachment that allows you to gently spray a stream of lukewarm water over the wound. If you can do this for 5 minutes at a time, 3 times a day it will speed up the healing.

A wound like this may take 2 weeks or so to completely heal.

Dr. Marie.

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