Cat versus lurcher leads to an emergency appointment for The Yorkshire Vet

When he arrived, Ed looked very sorry for himself. A placid lurcher can look lugubrious at the best of times, but the Harry Potter-like gash in his forehead was deep and painful. It seemed to make Ed’s ears droop even more than usual and he looked as confused and bewildered as he was sore.

“He’s been ambushed by a cat!” explained his owner, indignantly.

“Oh dear,” I replied. “I don’t think it usually happens that way round!”

“It’s a great big ginger tom. He’d been hiding in a bush, waiting to pounce. I watched the attack from a distance but there was nothing I could do. He dived on poor Ed when he went past,” recounted Ed’s mum, before adding. “He’s a real menace around the village!”

Images of cartoon cats and mice came to mind, where a different Tom was usually the perpetrator of violence as well as the victim. I wondered if this tom had planned to use a heavy metal object and if a pointy, throbbing lump might appear on the dog’s head as stars and tweeting birds circled.

Once upon a time, the hierarchy was clear. In my childhood, my grandparents’ garden was filled with Jack Russell and Bedlington Terriers along with their own lurchers. Woe betide any feline who was fearless or foolish enough to venture nearby. Then, all dogs chased cats (and rabbits); cats chased mice; birds ate insects, (although I do know an old lady who swallowed a fly. I’m not sure what happened to her). Now, the old lines seem to have blurred. The times, as Mr Dylan once said, they are a changing. I know many cats which happily cohabit with dogs. I even know a goat called Abbie that hangs out with the farm dogs. “She thinks she’s a dog,” explained the farmer once upon a time. And I know a pig which lives in a kitchen, happily sharing a bed with two Labradors and a three-legged Huskie. In our own household, on a sunny day, our hapless but happy rabbit hops and jumps in the garden with Emmy, our Jack Russell for company. They seem to be friends, although the harmony of the relationship is really based on mutual ignoring rather than shared interests. But any friendship between a terrier and a lop would have been implausible in times gone by.

But back to the unfortunate Ed. On closer inspection, there was no throbbing bulge on the top of his head nor circling stars. Just the zig-zag laceration, like an attack from the foil of Zorro, bisecting Ed’s forehead almost perfectly. It was deep but clean and most of the earlier bleeding had stopped, but it definitely needed some stitches.

After some light sedation, a neat clip and a clean, I instilled some local anaesthetic and carefully placed a row of sutures. Surgery like this is very satisfying and not at all stressful or too challenging. When the edges are re-apposed, the pain quickly dissipates and healing can begin. Ed looked much better as soon as he came round (he didn’t even seem to have an Ed-ache) and we summoned his owner back.

“Come back in ten days for those sutures to be removed,” I instructed as I handed him over, with a couple of bottles of medication, “And, whatever you do, Ed, keep out of trouble and stay away from the bush. Remember, it’s an Am-bush!” Nobody, especially Ed, appreciated my joke.