Dog Saves Cat In Rare Blood Transfusion Op

A dog has saved the life of a cat by providing its blood for a transfusion. Macy the Labrador stepped in when Rory the ginger tom became ill after eating rat poison.

Vet Kate Heller, of Tauranga in New Zealand, said the feeble feline was fading fast and needed an immediate transfusion to survive. She searched for a suitable donor cat but could not find one quickly enough.

Ms Heller decided to take a gamble and use dog blood to try to save the animal, knowing Rory would die instantly if she gave him the wrong type. Rory’s owner Kim Edwards frantically called up her friend Michelle Whitmore, who volunteered Macy as a blood donor.

The vet took 120ml of blood from the 18-month-old Labrador and transferred it to the cat, which started to recover within an hour. Ms Heller said she had never performed the procedure before, but after taking advice from an animal blood laboratory, decided it could be the only way to save Rory.

Ms Heller said: “I hadn’t heard about it or read about it. It’s not in any textbook. “People are going to think it sounds pretty dodgy – and it is – but hey, we’ve been successful and it’s saved it’s life.”

Ms Edwards said the cat appeared to have come through its ordeal unscathed, seemingly without any canine side effects. “The vets just went above and beyond… it’s incredible that it worked,” she said. “Rory is back to normal and we don’t have a cat that barks or fetches the paper.”

Interspecies transfusion, as acts like a dog giving a cat blood are called, has only been successfully carried out a handful of times.

According to experts, cats do not have antibodies that reject dogs’ blood, so a transfusion may buy enough time for the cat to regenerate its own red blood cells. Only one transfusion can be done because a second dose of dog blood would be the death of the cat.

Sources: ITN, Sky News
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wESS8JjSx0
http://news.sky.com/story/1131354/dog-saves-cat-in-rare-blood-transfusion-op

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