Cataract Surgery To Be Performed On "Santa" The Bobcat
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A partially blind bobcat from the Philadelphia region may soon have the ability to see better.
Cataract surgery is scheduled for "Santa," the 23-year-old bobcat on Thursday. The 25-pound animal is being cared for with her brother Bobby on a wildlife preserve in New Jersey.
Dr. Martha Low is a board-certified veterinary ophthalmologist at the Center for Animal Referral and Emergency Services (CARES) in Langhorne. She'll be performing the surgery.
"She has cataracts in both eyes. The left is worse than the right and the left eye has been there for long enough that the cataract actually got so heavy it fell forward into the front of the eye," Low said. "So she has a regular cataract in the right eye and she sees something from that, and then a sort of what we call hyper mature, really dense, cataract that has slipped to the left eye."
Santa's owner elected to have cataract removal surgery on just the left eye. Dr. Low says one of the challenges will be the aftercare. With a domesticated animal, a rigorous regime of drops are placed in the pets eye after surgery, something not able to be done with a wild animal.
