Dubai: An injured street cat is set to get a new lease of life after Dubai Municipality's veterinary section went to its rescue.
An Emirati man found the injured female cat in a street in Al Mamzar area on Monday afternoon. He reported it to the municipality's call centre, which in turn alerted the veterinary section in the Public Health Services Department.
Even though the notification came after regular office hours, a team was despatched to rescue the cat, Dr Murad Basheer Mustafa, head of veterinary therapeutic sub unit in Al Khawaneej told Gulf News on Tuesday.
He said the unit attends to animal welfare notifications 24x7. Though there was no witness to it, he said, it was clear that the cat was hit by a car and had broken its hip.
The team provided first aid to the cat and took it to the vet clinic in Al Khawaneej. A team under Dr. Mustafa provided further treatment to the cat.
"The diagnostic methods helped realise that the cat may survive. We gave it fluid therapy, pain killers, anti inflammatories and antibiotics. It is a completely healthy cat and not suffering from any other disease. So, we have decided to use an advanced surgery of hip pinning to help fix the fractured hip bone."
He said the surgery will be done only after the cat's health becomes stable in a couple of days.
Once it is completely treated, the cat will be registered with the municipality's pet registry.
"We want to change it from a stray cat to a pet cat. After treatment, we will look for an owner to adopt the cat."
He said it was not the first time that the vet team rescued injured animals.
"We are doing this on a daily basis. But it is not always that the community takes notice of it. We treat stray cats and dogs when we capture them for our TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) programme to sterilize them. If we find any injured cats or dogs we treat and either return them to the street or give them to people willing to adopt them."
He said the public can report sighting injured animals to the municipality's call centre 800900.
