Tiny Kitten Brought to ER with Horrible Wound. Nose Falls Off While Vets Rush To Save His Life
It’s pretty much universal that people don’t like pain. Yet it also seems to bother most of us more when an animal suffers rather than a human.
I can only imagine what workers at the MSPCA-Angell animal adoption center must’ve felt when they met the stray tabby kitten that would eventually become known as Nigel.
He entered the lives of the center’s staff in the summer of 2017 when a good Samaritan brought in the tiny, 6-week-old kitty.
“His nose and much of his face seemed discolored, but that appeared to be a standard infection for which we started him on pain medicine and antibiotics,” manager Alyssa Krieger said in a statement.
“We were shocked to discover later just how seriously injured Nigel was.”
Nigel’s caretakers weren’t sure how he’d injured himself. Mike Pavletic, who heads surgery efforts at the MSPCA, believed he might’ve hurt himself while scrounging for food.
“It likely got its upper nose caught in something like a can of tuna,” he said. “Sometimes people will leave the lid partially attached, so the unfortunate animal sticks her head in there scavenging for food and then they get trapped and when it comes out it tends to slice off part of the face.”
But Morgan Dupuis, who eventually adopted Morgan, explained that professionals gave her a different story: “[The] belief was that Nigel had chewed on an electrical cord and he got shocked.
“The thick covering from his nose looked like it was blocking his breathing. They were flushing out his nose to try and clear up his passageway [and] his nose just fell off.”
As horrific as that sounds, it didn’t seem to bother Nigel all that much. He liked to snuggle, and although he had trouble eating, he didn’t appear to be in pain.
People soon found themselves drawn to his malformed mug. His Instagram account eventually racked up over 10,000 followers.
However, MSPCA-Angell wasn’t willing to let Nigel stay in his deformed state. Pavletic began to formulate a course of surgery to help the little cat.
On November 2, 2017, Nigel went through successful surgery and presented a much prettier face to the world. “He’s a complete angel,” Dupuis said.
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