Here Comes Bionic Cat!

Guest post contributed by Eugene Koh of Switch Magazine

First used in 2005 to develop a prosthetic for a woman who lost her arm in the London bombings, the intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthetics (Itaps) technology has now given Oscar the cat a new lease of life.

Oscar didn’t lose his back feet to explosives; however, his feet were severed by a combine harvester, the huge tractor-like machine used for harvesting crops at high speeds. Surrey-based veterinary surgeon Noel Fitzpatrick performed the surgery that involved implanting custom-made metal “pegs” to each ankle of Oscar’s back limbs. These new fittings were bioengineered to mimic the way deer antler bone grows through the skin.

Mr Fitzpatrick explained: “The real revolution with Oscar is [that] we have put a piece of metal and a flange into which skin grows into an extremely tight bone.”

“We have managed to get the bone and skin to grow into the implant and we have developed an ‘exoprosthesis’ that allows this implant to work as a see-saw on the bottom of an animal’s limbs to give him effectively normal gait.”

The operation was the first of its kind in the world, and considering that the new appendages were fitted at rather unusual part of the cat’s limb means that Itaps can be adapted to fit various bone joints. The fact that Oscar is adapting well to his new feet holds a lot of potential for Itaps in the development of human prosthetics.

Mr Fitzpatrick’s work has been explored in a BBC documentary called The Bionic Vet.