The first feline hip replacement in the New York area was performed in March 2007. Although the surgery is common for humans, veterinary medicine has just begun to practice this on cats. It is usually performed, as in humans, to replace a painful or damaged hip joint, where no better alternative exists. Because animals under about 40 lb (20 kg) carry their own weight with little strain on each leg, hip modification surgeries are often sufficient to restore hip function in many cases (See: Hip dysplasia).
An animal suffering from hip problems may well have been in some degree of chronic pain all its life from a very young age. Such animals often show no overt sign of pain, they do not cry out or howl. Rather, they have adapted to it over an extended period, and learned to live with it. As a result in many animals, successful hip replacement is reported to return them to a level of playfulness and happiness not previously seen.
Famous quotes containing the words feline, hip and/or replacement:
“You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.... Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.”
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“I stir my martinis with the screw,
four-inch and stainless steel,
and think of my hip where it lay
for four years like a darkness.”
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