# small wild birds over coming shock after being caught by a cat?



## trogdorable

neighbors cat brought in a small bird last night, an adult thrush i think. little thing just sat in my hand pretty unresponsive, although i couldnt see any injury ( doesnt mean it wasnt there though ) i assumed it would die from the shock. 

i put it in a box with a pile of hay in a quiet room, only checking on it twice.

fully expected to find it either dead, or still alive but with more obvious injury this morning. if i found an injury i assume i could have phoned the sspca?

anyway, this morning it had enough ernergy to escape the box and fly round my room, stopping to rest ontop of my wardrobe.
it flew down to my window sill, opened my window and off it went. it appeared to be quite strong and willing!


i was just wondering how often small birds manage to over come shock? i thought most of them die from it before they would die from infection?

also wondering if what i done was right!


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## Herpster

Nearly all the birds I have come across in that situation die from shock, so that little thrush was very lucky :2thumb: 

And yes you gave it the best chance and it worked, sounds like you did it right to me : victory:


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## corvid2e1

While shock is certanly an important factor, and the most important to deal with straght away, it is not as big a killer as is often assumed. Many cat attack victims suffer serious internal injuries due to the pressure of the cat's bite. This, more often than the shock, is what kills them in the first few hours. Depending on the injury this can still be a factor for anything up to 3 or 4 days after the attack. The main killer with cat bites though in infection. Almost all cat bites will quickly become infected, even if the wound is very small or not even aparent. Any bird that is brought to us suspected of being caught by a cat, even if it apears to have no injuries, gets a full course of antibiotics, and even then, most, especialy blackbird size and smaller, don't survive those critical first 3 days, mainly due to septicemia.

Incidently, your treatment for shock was spot on, warm, dark, quiet. Far too many people play around with them, checking on them contantly, trying to feed them etc. This only makes the situation worse. Leave them completly alone for several hours, or overnight if brought in later. (this of course does not apply to young birds that do need constant feeding)


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## trogdorable

corvid2e1 said:


> While shock is certanly an important factor, and the most important to deal with straght away, it is not as big a killer as is often assumed. Many cat attack victims suffer serious internal injuries due to the pressure of the cat's bite. This, more often than the shock, is what kills them in the first few hours. Depending on the injury this can still be a factor for anything up to 3 or 4 days after the attack. The main killer with cat bites though in infection. Almost all cat bites will quickly become infected, even if the wound is very small or not even aparent. Any bird that is brought to us suspected of being caught by a cat, even if it apears to have no injuries, gets a full course of antibiotics, and even then, most, especialy blackbird size and smaller, don't survive those critical first 3 days, mainly due to septicemia.
> 
> Incidently, your treatment for shock was spot on, warm, dark, quiet. Far too many people play around with them, checking on them contantly, trying to feed them etc. This only makes the situation worse. Leave them completly alone for several hours, or overnight if brought in later. (this of course does not apply to young birds that do need constant feeding)



if it happens again should i keep the bird back even if its flying well, to be collected? who should i phone? sspca?


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## corvid2e1

To be safe, yes. When we get calls on cat attacks we always ask for them to be brought in, even if the caller can't see any injuries. In most cases it turns out that people simply don't look that closely (and don't realy know what to look for, a patch of wet feathers for example usualy conseals a wound underneath) and we usualy find wounds on examination, ofter on the areas covered by the wings such as the pelvis and rib cage, which wouldn't have been noticed by just looking at the bird in the box. sometimes there realy are no visable injuries but even these will usualy show the signs of septicemia after a few days if not treated, as even the tiniest nick can get infected. We do ocasionaly get birds that realy are ok and, despite being caught they do not have any injuries at all and do not develop any infection. These, unfortunetly tend to be the very lucky minority though.

As for who to phone, it depends who is around your area. Try ringing local vets as, while they will probably not have the experience to take on the bird themselves, most have a list of local rehabers who they themselves pass animals on to. The SSPCA will be the next choice if you do not have any rehabers in your area.


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