Degloving Tails

Question
Whats Up? I seem to be asking u a lot of questions recently.

Any who i have a couple female rats at home in a 3 story cage. Aside from the rats i have 3 cats 1 dog and some fish. the fish and dog however are not important.

A couple of days ago i heard one of my rats give this terrible squeak and when i went to check on her a piece of her tail (maybe 1/2 inch or so) was gone. The cat had bitten it off. The tail she lost wasnt the tip but the middle of her tail so a tiny piece (about the last 1/2 or so) is still hanging on connected by...something im not quite sure, It looks a litte like bone.

She chews at this area a lot when cleaning her tail, and some of the other rats steep on it. I took her to the vet and they cut the hanging piece of and cauterized the end..it is now a black color but she seems to be doing well. They gave me some medicine to give her to prevent infection.

My question to you is.

- What can i do the make sure she dosent get an infection? Can you recomend any good at home treatments or creams etc that will work when the medicine runs out (theres only enough for the first couple of days)

- Besides shutting the door and keeping the cat out is there anything i can do to stop my rats from trying to attack the cat when he gets close to the cage. When they do this their tails hang through the bars and im pretty sure thats out he got one.

Thank You!

Answer
Ouch.  What you saw that looked like bone was bone, actually since the tail is an extension of the rats vertebrae.  What kind of antibiotics did they give her?   Also, the black is necrotic tissue (dead tissue) and this will fall off eventually.  Let me know what she is on because it may have properties that it continues to work for days and days after the medicine runs out. Also, once it really heals you can rub neosporin ointment on it.  As for keeping the cat away from them, I have six cats and I keep the door shut so they never come in. My rats are terrified of the cats.  THey are not scared of my dog that is almost bigger than I am and they swat her in her nose and make her cry and even make her nose bleed, my poor moose dog.  LOL  There is one thing you can do to protect both the rats and cat from each other and that is to cover the rats cage with hardware cloth.  See what it looks like on my website here:

http://www.freewebs.com/crittercity/gettingstarted.htm