For the first time, the eye of a tigress was saved in the operating room.
Ratna, a 17-year-old Sumatran tigress, lives in She walks to the safari park, near Cambridge.
Staff noticed that her left eye - which had previously had a cataract removed - was deteriorating, and a specialist eye vet diagnosed a corneal ulcer.
Corneal surgery, which is not uncommon in domestic dogs and cats, requires "a lot more anesthetic" in Ratna's case.
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Surgeon Dr. David Williams, from veterinary schools and hospitals of Cambridge University, said that after two weeks of careful observation, he was "delighted to be able to discharge Ranta" as fully cured.
The tigress previously underwent cataract surgery, before she and her daughter were moved to the safari park in early 2019, where they will spend their final years.
Because she needed drops on a daily basis, the staff closely monitored the condition of her left eye.
The original surgery, which was carried out in February, was supposed to cure the clouding of the eye, but it did not produce the desired results and her eye continued to deteriorate.
Dr Williams, who regularly went to the park to monitor the ulcer, said: "I think she might have poked herself in the eye on a bamboo stick in her enclosure."
The very next day, together with Steve Philip, a veterinarian from International Zoological Veterinary Group, performed an operation believed to be the first of its kind on a big cat.
"We operate the same as we would a domestic cat - only with much more anesthesia," he said after the half-hour operation on the 93-kilogram tigress.
"But I don't think anyone has done that on this species before."
Ratna likes to spend most of her time on the highest platform, but park director Rebecca Villers says that before the operation, she seemed unsure when she should go down.
"Her coordination seems better now, and best of all, after the operation, the War Drops are no longer needed - and they were never her favorite," she added.
Dr Williams says it is unlikely that Ratna could see out of her left eye before the operation, given that "it was in complete disarray ... but the key thing is that her eye was preserved".
"I don't think her eye was the best after the cataract surgery, and it's even worse after the injury - but she managed because her vision in the other eye is good - and now we've managed to solve the problem that caused her pain," he said.
He added that Ratna had been "fantastic" - allowing him to examine her eye in recent weeks - and that she was now "absolutely fine - you wouldn't know she was ever missing anything".
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