Nailing the cat
Three months ago we got a cat.
It wasn’t my idea. I’m not that pushed about felines but Herself had been moaning for years that she wanted one and that I had the dog and that life wasn’t fair and all that shit. In the end, just for a bit of peace and quiet, I relented.
The cat arrived and the first thing the little fucker did was to bite me.
I’m not talking about one of those pathetic little scratches that would have a modern mum rushing little precious off to A&E but a real bite. The tooth went right through the root of my fingernail. It was really fucking painful!
I didn’t realise quite how much damage had been done until the nail started turning colour. And once the blood had stopped oozing it was replaced with liquid custard. My finger swelled like a balloon and the cat was firmly off my Christmas Card list.
Eventually the swelling went down and various liquids dried up but the real damage had been done. The little shit had killed my nail and it had stopped renewing itself. I cut away the obviously dead bits and was left with a rather strange sight on my finger. I had a double ended nail.
It wasn’t sore or anything like that. It just looked weird. There was nothing I could do about it though and I would have forgotten about it only for the fact that I had to look at it all the time. I have gotten to know it almost like the back of my hand
Since then, the old nail has been progressively moving down while a new nail is growing behind it. No sweat.
But now it’s reaching the end of my finger and is starting to tip around the end. It looks like a lorry about to dump a load of sand.
I now have a problem. It’s acting like a barb and every time I stick my hand it my pocket, it catches when I pull my hand out again. I suppose it’s a fair reason for not buying my round down the pub though. It’s still held on with a fair bit of skin, or root or whatever the attaching bit is called, so I can’t pull it off [I’ve tried!]. And one of these days it’s going to catch in something and be ripped off, probably at a time when I least expect it. That is going to painful and messy.
So now you know why the cat gets a boot up the hole every time he asks to be let out.
Tubular bandage might protect the old nail well enough until it parts company with you.
Like a condom? I doubt I have one small enough……………
I had that situation once, some years ago. When it got to the stage yours has, I’d just wrap an Elastoplast (Band Aid, Hansaplast, Tensoplast, whatever the generic is in your locale) round my finger. Not much more you can do, really, apart from wait for it to drop off.
To be honest, I’m not that keen on bandages – they tend to be awkward and make typing tricky. They also make nose-picking difficult.
Ah but the solution is but simple, some car body filler, wet and dry paper and some of the missus’s clear nail varnish. I mean, you could swap the clear varnish stuff for some proper car lacquer but those spray cans are a bugger to use.
I have the wee problem more or less sorted. I attacked the sticky uppy bit with a pair of heavy duty wire-snips [my nails apparently are made of tungsten] and so it doesn’t catch in anything any more.
A vet once told me that of all the animals he treated,the one he did not want a bite from was a cat. Apparently a cats mouth and teeth are full of the most dangerous bacteria going. As a cats teeth are so sharp they penetrate flesh easily and the nasties are injected deep into the wound. Attempts to wash the wound do not clean it properly. You need to get it to bleed freely to stand any chance of removing any infection.
There was no pint in trying to wash it as I couldn’t even see where the puncture was. Blood [and eventually, custard] just started oozing so I just kept pumping that out. There was a nasty infection all right but at least it didn’t spread. Liberal doses of alcohol [taken internally] may have helped?
The tooth went right through the root of my fingernail. It was really fucking painful!
I once made the mistake of getting my hand too near some mating gerbils. They are , in Latin, called ‘Clawed Warriors’ for a reason. The bite in my finger touched bone. I got my revenge though by having the male castrated the next day HAH!
I must say that bite was one of the most painful injuries I have had [and I have had thousands]. It was up there with broken ribs and major toothache. Luckily it only lasted for a day.
Couldn’t castrate the fucker, unless that can be done twice?