Wednesday 3rd October 2007

The Tikki Hywood Trust responds immediately to a call about a serval that has been hit by a car in a nearby suburb. The serval cat is limping badly. Lisa Hywood contains the injured animal with a net and blanket, puts it in a transport crate and takes it to a veterinary surgery as the injuries appear serious. Drs Lisa Marabini and Keith Dutlow attend to the serval, sedating it and inspecting the extent of its injuries. Both its thighs have been completely scraped of skin and bare muscle is exposed. X-rays confirm it also has a break in the humerus just above the elbow joint of a front leg and it has been broken for some days. The animal is male, less than a year old and in very poor condition. His fur is pale and matted due to malnutrition.

He is cleaned up as much as possible while sedated. It is decided that his leg requires an intra-medullary pin (a pin literally inside the bone holding the two broken ends together). This will be done the next day as it is too late to perform the surgery and the vets want to see if he can use his back legs. He is brought to the Trust's Headquarters where the vets observe his recovery from the sedation. Whilst sleeping peacefully he is named “Frodo”, another Tolkien character, to add to the Trust’s growing family.

Once Frodo starts coming around from the sedation Keith & Lisa do the necessary tests to determine if there is any spinal injury. Thankfully Frodo has sensation in his feet which means that he does not have any serious spinal trauma and his chances of recovery are good. If he had not, it would have indicated grave injury to the spine and then euthanasia would have been the only option.

He is then declared ready for surgery the next morning.