My cat has a torn ACL. Has your cat had a torn ACL?

March 4, 2018 12:39 PM

My cat turned up lame the other day, and after a blessedly cheap vet visit, it has been determined that she has torn her ACL. She is 14, and she is limping. I want to know if your cat has had this or a similar injury, and how that all went.

According to my vet, in cats there is not a surgical option for this issue. In cats, you wait and it stabilizes. They gave me a pain medication and a joint supplement (Cosequin, and the painkiller is Buprenorphine). Evidently the pain meds are also a sedative.

I have ordered some steps to help her get up on the couch and on the bed, the two places in my condo that she goes.

If this happened to your cat, what was the outcome?

posted by Medieval Maven to Pets & Animals (8 answers total)

We have a cat that had the same problem. He limped around for a couple of weeks and we kept him in the house as much as possible. Eventually he healed and now walks with out a limp, however occasionally he will start limping again for a couple days.
posted by tman99 at 1:01 PM on March 4, 2018

Also, obligatory cat photo. Her name is Daeva.
posted by Medieval Maven at 1:17 PM on March 4, 2018

Beautiful cat!

My big fluffer tore a tendon after climbing a fence trying to catch a birb on the other side. Birb flapped its wings at him, his back paw got caught in the fence as he fell, and he came limping inside going "graarmrar stoopid birb mrraaar mroww halp."

The vet told me the same thing. Cats are excellent self-physical-therapists. Mine came out fine after a few weeks of limping, but he was young when it happened.

The joint supplement really works and is safe, so if she does seem to keep needing that, it should be okay.

This episode also saw my fluffer slooowly walk to a corner of the vet's office and turn his back on us, visibly relaxing as he thought that by not seeing us and facing two walls, he was hidden. "Well, he has a limp, but he's putting weight on it and moving, so he'll work it out," vet commented.
posted by fraula at 1:25 PM on March 4, 2018

My previous female cat misjudged a jump, caught her foot, and wound up with a dislocated toe ("dogs dislocate their toes all the time," said the vet, "but for a cat that takes talent") and torn ligament. In her case, she was in a cast for a few weeks, to her considerable displeasure, but everything healed up with no complications.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:27 PM on March 4, 2018

My co-worker”s cat had a torn acl once and the vet emphasized that she SHOULD NOT jump for a certain period of time. So they set up a small tent in the living room and installed the cat in said tent. They’d all hang out in there and take naps together and feed her in the tent and at the end of the ordeal she’d healed nicely.
posted by rdnnyc at 5:26 PM on March 4, 2018

This happened to my cat when he was still a kitten. I kept him under a laundry basket for 6 weeks while he healed but there were no problems. He was fine. Now he's a hefty 14 year old and still not limping.
posted by irisclara at 9:37 PM on March 4, 2018

A friend's cat tore a ligament and was confined to a large dog crate for a couple of weeks while it healed. Cat was not at all impressed but is fine now.

(My childhood cat got some glass stuck in his paw once and learned that limping = attention and so used to occasionally limp just for the fuss years later)
posted by corvine at 2:04 AM on March 5, 2018

Thank you everyone. I don't think it's feasible nor did my vet recommend trying to confine her, and she's purring and asking to be picked up and snuggling and stuff, so I think she's going to be okay. It is good to see stories where people's cats recovered - I went through my other cat having cancer and I feel like I have vet-related PTSD at this point . . .it's so hard to know what to do! I feel much better now and I hope to keep her safe and happy until her injury stabilizes.
posted by Medieval Maven at 6:28 AM on March 5, 2018