There is a furious rush of claws and spines. It occurs at perceptible speed, in the sense that your ability to take in and process photons occurs at 120 times per second. And yet, there is a sense that as the fight occurs, time has suspended its normal rules. The giant lizard shakes and shivers and the muscles along its spine stretch and press. The cat tears with its teeth into the neck, lifts its great tail for balance, shakes a front paw and digs its claws into the back with its other front paw. 

The lizard arches its back, spines stretching and kicks its legs, and all at once it shudders and collapses, and the cat comes down atop it. The cat, for its part, looks satisfied as it begins to dig at the lizard while eating. But it drags its left rear paw, and you can see three spines arched into the ankle. 

There is quiet then, only the sound of the cat at work with its kill and the faint echoes of motion that tumble around into the tunnels beyond. 

Tell us your approach to a wounded cat that is busy eating, to extract the spines and deal with any potential complications of the wound.