Mild tail injury as mild as I think it is?

[LittleCritters]

My eldest rat, Cageney, just injured her tail. She got it caught, panicked, and in her desperation to get away scraped it a little bit. She definitely lost a few scales... as if I cut my leg while shaving? It's not deep but scraped off enough to make it bleed (or at least, appears to be bleeding although nothing transfers to my fingers when I touch it) The area affected is about the length of my finger nail on both sides. Very comparable to cutting yourself with a razer or getting your finger caught in a door. It's not gruesome but it still looks pretty sensitive.

She doesn't react when I run my fingers down her tail or touch it directly although she definitely screamed when it happened (thank God, so I could help her before she really did damage). She's running around as if nothing happened and doesn't appear to be interested in her tail at all. However she is old (at least over 2 years, hard to say) and she's been slowing down lately so I don't completely trust her reactions. I feel like she should at least be licking at it or something.

I don't see bones, it's not gushing blood, nothing broke off... but I have been reading some nasty things about rat tail injuries (sloughing?) so if this is worse than it looks, please let me know! I'll keep an eye on her in the meantime. Wish I could provide a picture, but hopefully the description suffices.

Thanks in advance!

 

[xxchelle]

Some bad injuries can cause a tail to deglove (basically, the skin comes off, leaving bone (cartilage?) exposed.

This doesn't sound like the case, it sounds like a very mild scrape. Keep an eye on it but it's probably fine, personally I wouldn't do anything special at this point other than remove/fix whatever she caught it on so it doesn't happen again.

 

[Cigar]

At the most you're going to want to keep her cage really tidy till it heals, like you would with any wound. If you're really worried and if she's a rat that doesn't groom her tail you could always apply a little bit of polysporin. Just flush the fresh wound with a saline solution first [warm water and salt] to clean the area and pat it dry.

Here's an instance where the bone was actually exposed and needed to be amputated to prevent infection: http://ratguide.com/health/figures/degl ... gure_1.php Sounds like your girl just had a scrape. I agree with Chelle that fixing what she caught it on is most important.

 

[LittleCritters]

Thanks guys! I have washed it in water and salt and stuck her in a separate cage lined with blankets till the morning just to keep it from getting dirty. I actually just had a pile of books on the ground for them to climb around on and one her ratty sisters knocked one off the top onto her tail. Hardwood floor so I guess it was just enough friction to skin her a bit. It's unfortunate that it takes accidents like that to realise even seemingly harmless things could easily cause injury when you're a tiny little rattie :emb: Thank God it was mild. Wouldn't have been able to live with myself if it has been like the image you provided. Especially when she's such an old lady :sad3:

Thanks again for the quick responses, really eased my mind.

 

[xxchelle]

I wouldn't separate her from her rat family, definitely not. That causes a lot of stress on the rat, and there's really no need for it for a minor tail scrape.

 

[lilspaz68]

She was probably more frightened then anything when it happened. Keep her with her family, a scrape should heal just fine on its own.

 

[LittleCritters]

Yep, don't panic, as I posted that at 3am and I was up at 6am it was only a couple hours of alonetime (in which she promptly curled up and fell asleep, finally, a break from the younglings!) so it could stop bleeding and the polysporin could dry (and I could sleep!). The polysporin on her tail attracted too much attention from her cagemates and one of them accidentally made the scrape a little worse. She's three years old so hard to defend herself against those fit little girls! I wouldn't knowingly do something that might stress her out unless I thought it was necessary :wink2:

Looking okay this morning though! Thanks for the salt and water suggestion, so obvious and yet it never occured to me as a gentler disinfectant. And thanks again for the input, I've never encountered a tail injury and as the poor thing's already missing half her tail (no idea why as she's an adoption) I wasn't going to take chances.

 

[MomRat]

Our boy gregory had his tail sticking out under the edge of a cutoff cardboard box the second night we had him, his cagemate jumped from a higher shelf onto the box, startling him and making him jerk the tail under the cardboard while there was close to a pound of weight on it - slice! It bled like nothing you've ever seen, and when a rat is scared(and new to a home!) that tail just windmills everywhere. I don't think there was a single surface in our bathroom that didn't end up with blood on it. We applied pressure for forever until it stipped bleeding, and put him on clean fleece for the night. He still has a bit of a scar on the tail, a dimple of sorts. You just have to keep an eye on it. =)

 

[LittleCritters]

Eek, Mom, and I thought I was stressed! So glad it wasn't as bad as some of these posts have shown it can be. I'm not sure I could have handled that :sad3: I was bad enough with just a scrape!