Tag Archives: torsion

Regular readers of my blog will know that my family and I have raised numerous foster kittens over the years. We have had queens and kittens, kittens without moms and infant kittens with their umbilical cords still attached. Raising kittens by hand is a lot of work but rewarding and heartwarming to see them learn to “spiderman” up the side of the sofa and crawl into your lap. Despite fostering over 100 kittens, Saturday night was a new experience for me. Acorn and Cashew, two little boy orange kittens about four weeks old, had been doing brilliantly. They were eating, starting to use the litterbox and developing individual personalities. However, when the 8pm feeding rolled around, Cashew had a bit of white glop on his face, and I wasn’t sure what it was. He refused the bottle and proceeded to have a giant amount of diarrhea. I got him cleaned up and, when I put him in the kitten pen, noticed more white glop, which I then realized was kitten vomit. Next, Cashew draped himself over the edge of the litterbox like a towel over the bar in the bathroom. He was weak and wobbly. I panicked and called the foster kitten emergency number, and off we went to the animal ER at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center.

Most people don’t realize it, but internal organs are not fixed in place and do have the ability to move around inside the body. When the movement of an internal organ involves a twist, the patient becomes critically ill because the twist cuts off blood supply to that organ. Internal organs can twist either on their long axis (torsion) or along their short axis (volvulus). The most common disorder caused by a twisted organ is bloat, or gastric dilation and volvulus. However, the veterinarians at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center diagnose and treat a variety of twisted organs in dogs, cats and rabbits. I’ll discuss further in today’s blogpost.