Feline terror in child ward

BONGAON/KOLKATA: The cat is out of the bag. On Monday night, a cat sneaked into the special care unit of a sub-divisional hospital with windows and doors left ajar and prowled on a baby, barely a week old.
And as it happens, the animal started scratching and biting the baby till the ward sweeper noticed.
The incident at the Bongaon hospital has sparked protests in the area.However, director of health services Prabhakar Chatterjee had a different story to tell. The cat, he claimed, entered during the visiting hours and did not bite the baby.
“We have inquired about the incident. A cat had merely scratched the baby while he was being administered phototherapy,� he said.
The ward sweeper,who is used to such feline visits, had warned the baby’s mother Swati Biswas, admitted at bed number 20. Swati rushed to the phototherapy unit at the other end of the ward, but the nurses blocked her way.
“The doctor told me that my baby was suffering from jaundice. After the visiting hours, I went to the corridor to collect my clothes. When I returned, I saw nurses rushing to the end of the ward. The sweeper told me about the cat. I forced into the room and found that my baby had a bruise on his right leg. He was bleeding. The ward sister said the blood came out after giving him an injection. But I could hear other nurses discussing that the cat had bitten him,� recounted Swati.
The trouble began when the baby’s father, Ajay Biswas, came on Tuesday morning and refused to buy the hospital story.
The authorities still remained stoical. Cats and dogs in the wards were “common features�, superintendent H.N. Dutta observed. The furore could only make him fix the windows at the unit.