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Pet of the year

Pet of the year- Bravos! 

Bravos is a 10-year-old, domestic short hair cat and his story starts on one Friday morning back in June. While he was out for his morning wander Bravos was very sadly hit by a car. He was admitted to hospital and treatment was started. Sadly, his eye was too damaged to save so it was removed and his broken lower jaw was repaired with wire. 

He recovered well from his surgery and stayed in hospital over the weekend. On Monday it was decided that he was going to need a feeding tube to get nutrition and medication in Bravos and an oesophageal feeding tube was placed under general anaesthetic. 

Bravos recovered well from the anaesthetic and tube feeding was started while we waited for his tongue and throat swelling to go down. He stayed in hospital for the rest of the week and continued to get stronger and even put on a little weight. 

His amazingly dedicated owners came in and we taught them how to feed and medicate him and he went home after a week in hospital for continued care. For the next 2 weeks Bravos came back every 2 days.
Over the next 2 weeks Bravos continued to eat more and we advised his owners to start reducing his tube feeds. 

8 weeks after the accident we removed the wire from his jaw as it has healed nicely. His eating improved dramatically after the wire had been removed. The tube was removed under sedation and we all thought that was finally the end of the saga for Bravos. 

Bravos had other ideas and a short time after the tube was removed, Bravos went out one morning and didn't return home. 

His devastated owners came in to tell us he had been missing, posters and Facebook appeals were done but Bravos was still nowhere to be seen. 

Roughly 6 weeks since he went missing his owners had a call one Sunday and Bravos had been found. He had lost half his body weight, going from 4kg to 2kg! But seemed bright, had started to eat at home and hadn't sustained anymore injuries. 

We gave him intravenous fluids as he was dehydrated and very slowly introduced food which he ate well. We kept him in for 2 days then sent him home, strictly on house arrest. 

He came back the following week for a weight check and had put on an impressive 400 grams! Another check a week later he had gained 900 grams in 3 weeks and now weighed 2.9kg!