The collar was leather with a small amount of elastic but had no release mechanism. The cat had tried unsuccessfully to remove the collar, leading to what is known as a collar injury, which a Frankton vet said was a common occurrence.
Silky Kitty is presumed either to have been abandoned or have run away and the wound was the result of her attempting to remove the collar with her teeth and jaw, causing friction and rubbing.
After enduring the injury for a week, the cat was eventually trapped using a box trap, as she had become spooked, and taken to VetEnt, formerly Care Vets, in Frankton.
Vet Orla Fitzpatrick treated Silky Kitty and said collar injuries on cats were seen ''too often'', and Silky Kitty's wound was ''right down to the bone''. It was not the first time she had treated such an injury, Dr Fitzpatrick said.
''A proper cat collar has extra elastic to allow the cat to escape from it,'' or the other option is a snap-and-release collar, which ''if the cat gets caught, it just comes off''.
She acknowledged that cats with a passion for the outdoors could lose the snap-and-release collars often, but ''it's better than the collar injury'' and a potential vet bill of close to $1000. The $900 worth of vet fees Silky Kitty acquired were paid for by generous supporters through the Givealittle website.
While Silky Kitty's injury was to her mouth, cats can also injure their armpits from putting a leg through a loose non-snap-and-release collar and getting the collar wedged under a front leg.
The cat's wound was coupled with a ''nasty, nasty infection'' and she was clearly dehydrated, but her wound had since been stitched and she had been released, Dr Fitzpatrick said.
Silky Kitty is now living happily with an adopted family.
Queenstown Cat Rescue co-founder Ruth de Reus said the collar had been put on by someone with good intentions and Dr Fitzpatrick suspected the cat was not used to the collar so had ''tried to get out of it really quickly''.
To prevent collar injuries, Dr Fitzpatrick recommended cats be kept inside until they were used to the collar and, if the collar was elasticated, the cat needed to be monitored.
Because of the resort's transient nature many cats were abandoned or left for the Queenstown Cat Rescue to take care of once they were no longer kittens or when the owners moved on, Dr Fitzpatrick said.
However, ''a good sign'' was that this year she was seeing fewer kittens, which she attributed to the cat rescue's work catching, desexing and then releasing wild cats or periodically offering free desexing.
