Hello! My name is Cari, and this is Mephisto. Towards the end of January Mephisto came over to me limping pretty severely and crying with every step he took. He was heavily favoring his back left leg. We took him to the vet the following Monday for an exam and we were told that he had a severe soft tissue injury in his knee. The vet literally told me she could move his knee cap around from its normal position. We were sent home with a couple doses of pain killers and anti-inflammatories and told to keep him comfortable while his body did what it needed to do to heal.

After 3-4 weeks, Mephisto was still limping in the same leg, barely putting any weight on it, and primarily balancing all his weight onto his right leg when standing and he had developed a popping in his back left hip. I decided he needed a second look and back to the vet we went. The vet felt the popping during this exam and we did xrays. Thats when we got the new diagnosis. Mephisto is experiencing Femoral Head Necrosis. Basically the ball end of his femur, where it goes into the hip socket is dead due to lack of blood flow and it had fractured. This is most likely due to the injury from his knee causing him to use the leg less. To fix this, my vet suggested a Femoral Head Osteotomy. Basically they will remove the top of his femur, clean up whatever dead tissue is there from the Necrosis, and then sew his muscle back together. The muscle will keep his leg in place while his body forms a false soft tissue joint to replace the one that has been taken out. From all the research ive done, this is a fairly common procedure for young cats but will be quite the healing process for him.

We are asking for help after a lot of struggle internally. I can't let my boy continue to be in pain. I was told surgery can be up to $3500, and am waiting on a full quote from the vet.

Thank you for reading our story.