good news!

The vet said that Rusty's wound looks well, and that as it looks now he won't need an OP after all, so whatever gnawing he did yesterday didn't do too much damage despite the copious bleeding. And the second antibiotic did its job against the infection, so now I don't need to give him oral meds.

As an experiment the vet actually tried to tape a little bandage around his leg to see whether that might stop him from worrying the wound as it heals (and presumably itches), though we were both a bit dubious about the chances for this working. She said if it stays on for a while it might help, if he pulls it off, I should just go back to putting salve on the wound as before. The next check is on Friday. I'm really relieved that he didn't need the operation to clean up the wound, and just hope it will now just heal, and maybe his feet finally as well. *crosses fingers*