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The unseen dangers in chasing birds! An article about pyothorax. Robbie (names lovingly after Robbie Williams by one of my client’s daughters) is a beautiful, leggy tabby cat. One day he managed to catch a small bird, and proudly presented it to his owner before promptly eating the whole thing. A few days later he developed a nasty cough. His owner was about to bring him into the vets when he started coughing even more and then coughed and sneezed up some small bones. He then improved dramatically and we didn’t see him until several months later. By then the bird was long forgotten. He had gone right off food and was tired and breathless. On examination crackles could be heard on his chest and his temperature was high. He was only young, but I was very worried by his signs, suspecting there was fluid on his chest. This could mean a tumour, viral or bacterial infection, all of which can be very serious. X-rays showed large amounts of fluid round his lungs obscuring virtually everything else that should be visible. In Robbie’s case the most likely causes were fluid from heart failure, pus from infection and a substance called chyle. We decided to do a chest tap to try and get a sample of the fluid that seemed to be in no short supply. What came out was thick, yellow pus. This ‘pyothorax’ is not that uncommon in cats but can be incredibly hard to treat. The whole chest cavity becomes full of infection and the pus can be virtually impossible to penetrate with antibiotics alone. His owner was very keen for us to do as much as possible and this meant we had to open his chest and drain out all the pus and flush the whole cavity out with sterile saline. The operation went very well but we dared not hope too much. Robbie was started on six weeks of aggressive antibiotics and has, I’m glad to say, made a recovery that is little short of miraculous. It turned out the little bird he killed had had its revenge. A small puncture from a bone was the culprit. Over the weeks to months afterwards his chest had gradually become full of pus, ultimately making it impossible for his lungs to expand and causing breathing difficulties. Whether he’ll stop chasing the birds or not remains to be seen…
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