Heart of a Lioness

Our oldest lioness, Mugadi:

We had to do a knock-down on her yesterday, poor lamb, she hasn't been eating. As of yesterday morning it had been three days since she had eaten and we were justifiably worried. She's 19 and the average lifespan for captive lions is 20 so she's getting up there.

So we anesthetized her. She was darted at 9:40am, we drove her to the clinic and began our inspection. We took blood samples, thorough xrays, and a full body exam. Her lower canines are stumps, she lost them a while ago but they appear to have become infected. They had puss and smelled pretty bad. Her kidney levels were pretty normal, she had no cancer or anything weird on her xrays, but her blood sample did show a slight infection most likely from her teeth.

She was pretty dehydrated too so we pumped her full of fluids, tried to remove as much of the worst rotted tooth as we could and then gave her pain meds and anitbiotics.

She was back in the huts around 12:15pm. Around 5:15pm she finally showed signs of trying to sit up and by midnight when I went in to check on her she was fully sternal and was looking around and there was no vomit or anything weird.

I had today off but I checked up on her and when they came in this morning she was standing up and though still wobbly on the back end, walking around a bit. I guess she also FINALLY ate this evening, took her meds really well, and drank like half a trough of water.... soooo good!

That's my girl! She's a fighter.