This is the story of a cat that dodged a bullet through his heart (just).
Scout is a 1 year old MN Ragdoll cat that presented for acute onset non-weight bearing lameness of the left forelimb and mild respiratory dyspnoea. Radiographs revealed he had been shot. Upon presenting this bad news to the owner, they advised he lived next door to a driving range (suspicious....). The interesting part, is that we could just make out on the Computed Tomographic (CT) scan image, the trajectory of the bullet. It entered the left side, travelled via the thorax (just missing the heart by 9mm) then exited the right subcutaneous tissues outside of the chest. I repaired this mid-diaphyseal comminuted humeral fracture with bilateral locking plates, with the assistance of resident Dr Cormac OBrolchain. A bone graft was also utilised. The owner requested we keep the bullet for her as a souvenir, so our second job was retrieving it from the sharps container at 9.30pm on a Friday night. The fun never ends! :) I think we can safely say Scout is a lucky cat.
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