16 Hour Stressful Tiger Dental Day

Dr Wade Gingerich brought internist Dr. Ron Altman from their S. Florida practice at http://petdental.center/ to help Priya and Seth with their dental issues.  Dr. Justin Boorstein helped monitor the cats and kept up a lively conversation about dental care for big cats.  Operations started at 8:30 am and ended 8 pm as the cats were cleared as being safely awake.  My day started more than 2 hours earlier as I had to prepare for feeding the vet team and the film crew from USA Today’s new 360 venture.

 

Seth had 11 bad teeth extracted and still needs more work but he was at the 3 hour limit for anesthesia.  Priya had 3 root canals and still needs more work, but she was at her limit too.  Sedation is always dangerous for big cats, but at the three hour mark it becomes much, much more dangerous, so we try not to ever exceed that time span.  In between the LIVE Facebook feeds I was doing from my hand held stabilizer and from the over head explore.org cameras, I was running all over the sanctuary helping Jackie Hurwitz and her team scratch off the “shots” they wanted from their wish list.  “Can you make the cat crunch something, so we can get that sound?”  or “Could you get the cat to chase you so we can get her running?”

 

Priya woke up just fine and went back to her enclosure before dark.  Seth took a lot longer to wake up because he panics when confined.  Dr. Justin gave him drugs to cause him to wake up more slowly, with less thrashing about.  Honey, Becky and I sat with Seth and were very pleased that he was sternal and looking around without roaring and throwing himself at the bars.  The mosquitoes were eating Honey up (she must be sweeter than me) so Becky and I went off in search of bug spray.  A few minutes later I could hear the transport banging and we hurried back to find Seth quite agitated in the small space.

 

Now the dilemma:  He’s still really wobbly and it’s about 18 inches from the floor of the transport to the floor of his cage.  He has a bad ankle and we don’t want him to fall or injure it with a mis step out of the transport.  We also don’t want him to get brain damage from banging his head against the bars in his frightened and perhaps hallucinogenic state.  Which is worse?

 

I decide to open the transport door and hope for a soft landing…but he doesn’t go.  Seth just lays there, growling menacingly, looking out the door.  The door is heavy and I call on Honey to help me pull the handle down to the bottom where there is a hook to hold it, but I’ve pulled it at an angle and the handle is wedged between the transport and the wall of Seth’s cage.  The hook is flipped over the handle, but with 438 pounds of angry tiger rocking the transport, I’m afraid the hook will flip off the handle and cause the ridiculously heavy door to crash down on him.

 

Honey tries to pull some slack into the door rope but can’t get enough for me to pull the handle out flat against the wall.  I decide the only way to insure the door won’t fall on Seth is to hold the handle with one hand and hold the safety latch with the other.  My neck and shoulders feel like they are on fire, and I’ve been kneeling on rocks, so I ask Honey to fold up a blanket I was earlier wrapped in, to shove under my knees.  All the while Seth is breathing death threats right in my ear.  We are nose to nose there at the opening to the transport.  Gale is watching the whole thing from the Nest cam and drives back over to the sanctuary to help.

 

Gale is able to pull enough slack on the door’s cable that we get it flat against the wall of the cage and then she suggests that we bungie wrap the latch so that Seth can’t rock it loose.  Gale suggests everyone move away from Seth and shines her car lights on the opening, so he can see the ground ahead of him.  He still won’t go.  He’s mad, but not as crazy as before, so we replace Gale’s car lights with those of the dump truck golf cart so Gale can go home.  She isn’t gone two