Her Turn

Softie was spayed on Tuesday of this week. 

So Monday night I had to throw her into the bathroom (where I'd set up a private litterbox for her) and shut the door and leave there so she wouldn't be able to consume any food or water.

Her little mews were heartwrenching.

Scratchy, the sweet, wonderful big lug that he is, spent most of the night outside the bathroom door, lending quiet support.

We dropped her off at the vet's at 8 in the morning and picked her up around quarter to four.  The kids came along.  They love going to the vet.  Probably because nothing bad ever happens to THEM there.

The tech went over the whole post-op care checklist with me; nothing new - we went through this a couple months ago with Scratchy - the only difference, really, being that Scratchy's surgery was a lot less invasive than Softie's.  I know - my husband and any other male out there would cross his legs and disagree with me, but still.  Come on guys.  His incision was WAAAAAAAAAY smaller than Softie's. 

Anyway.  So we brought home little Softie in the carrier.  She was, of course, wearing the same ridiculous "Elizabethan collar" that Scratchy had worn.  Oh, joy.

Well, we got her home, and the kids went downstairs to play.  Old hands at this, they weren't all that interested in watching Softie emerge from her carrier.  It's just as well.  It took her a while.  Instead of trying to come out, she spent her time and energy trying to get that rid of the collar.  I had to keep reaching in and pulling one paw or the other out of the collar...at one point she got the edge of it jammed in her mouth.  And she wouldn't let me pull her out of the carrier, either.  She'd retreat (such as it was) to the opposite end as much as possible.  Maybe she was embarrassed to be seen in such a ridiculous get-up, and didn't want to make her entrance until she'd ripped it off.

Well, eventually she did emerge, with the stupid collar still on.  And she stumbled drunkenly around the house, shaking her head and pawing at the plastic annoyance.

 

She hated it.  Not just a "This thing's a pain!  Oh well, I'll eat some food"  kind of hate.  No.  It was a fiery, raging, angry red "DEATH TO ELIZABETHAN COLLARS EVERYWHERE!!!!" kind of animosity.

 

That's all she did - grabbed at it with her front paws, trying to rip it off her body, rolling and flipping around across the floor. 

   

And the thing is - she got it off.  And once she did, she calmed right down.

But, mindful of the post-op instructions to keep that thing on so she wouldn't lick her wound and rip out the stitches and spill her innards all over the floor, I caught her (carefully) and slipped the collar back over her head and tied the gauze snugly but not too tight. 

Immediately she was back to staggering around, bumping into things.  She managed to get herself caged in between the four legs of a dining room chair and there she sat for a little while, looking around and getting her bearings.  And no doubt plotting her next escape.

She had a tough time figuring out how to eat with that thing on.  At one point she looked up and flipped cat food in the air, startling herself.  Not a good time.

Of course, the worst part for her was my fault.  I was roasting chicken at a high temperature (crispy skin, less moisture loss) and when I opened the oven door at one point to check on it, our ultra sensitive smoke alarm went off.  Softie had been sitting in the dining room at that point, and when the alarm began so shriek, she basically leaped into the air in five directions at once and raced around the main floor in a circle or two and then vanished.

I was busy grabbing a chair to climb onto so I could take the battery out of the alarm and shut the hideous thing off, so I didn't see where she'd gone.  I checked all around the nearby rooms, under and behind furniture, but no cat.  I called down to the kids to see if she'd gone down there, but no, they hadn't seen her.  So I sent Alex and Julia upstairs to search the bedrooms and the bathroom up there.

They went up, spent oh, thirty seconds doing who knows what, and came down to report that they couldn't find her.  Uh-huh.  Thanks, kids.

I shut off the not-yet-boiling pasta water and went upstairs myself.  The light was on in the kids' bedroom, so I knew where they had looked, if you can call it that.  But I noticed Scratchy sitting on the floor beside the bed in my room, and I knew.  I peeked under the bed and sure enough, there she was.  Huddled between some under-the-bed storage containers, there she crouched, stupid collar still on, her eyes wide.  "It's okay," I crooned, and left her in peace.  I shut the bathroom door and the kids' bedroom door and went back downstairs.

Some time later Softie appeared again, minus the collar.  I found it by the bed, put it back on her, and went back to making dinner.  She crept around the edges of the rooms, waiting for some other horrible noise to sound.  And then, a bit later, she had the collar off again.

This was going to be a fun recuperation, I could tell.

 

 

 

 

In the end, she won.  The collar has stayed off.  Short of strangling her with the gauze strip, I can't see how we're going to keep the thing on.  So I am monitoring her suture wound multiple times a day, and so far, it's just fine.  I think she's far less stressed without the collar, and less stress is good for us all.

At the moment, she is on the table where the lizard tank sits, staring at a cricket that the lizard hasn't eaten yet.  Her tail is lashing from side to side in a predatorial frenzy.

She's just fine.

Comments

[LilSis]

Aaahh! Persistent little thing! Her eyes are just beautiful! My friend just adopted a cat that looks just like her. Is she part Maine Coon cat? I love those black bottom feet.

Hope she is doing well.

Speaking of kitties, I've got a post up today over at our blog www.bigsislilsis.com about my little kitty.

We've just recently discovered your blog and really like it. I look forward to reading more past posts!

[Lulu]

Poor little Softy and you. Good decision, she will be OK.

[Veronica]

Jayne -

I have a little brown/grey female tabby (Molly) who looks remarkably like Softie. I also have a male cat about six months older (Max). After my experience spaying them both I will try desperately in the future to only adopt male cats. Max's spaying experience was a breeze - small incision, watch him the first couple of days and make sure he doesn't scratch, it healed very quickly, end of story. Molly was totally different. She insisted on removing the collar but I wouldn't let her - I kept replacing it (much to my frustration and hers) and I ended up seperating the cats because they love to play and rough house and it just made me crazy with anxiety. The second day I wake up and she has opened her incision. I lost it - crying and running around and not knowing what to do. So I called in sick to work and brought her to the vet, where they closed it back up, tried to calm me down and then proceeded to give me something along the lines of super glue and tell me how to close the incision if it should happen again. Well, I definitely didn't want to think this was going to happen again so I didn't really appreciate her good intentions. The following day I come home from work and, lo and behold, the incision is opened again. I freak out and end up having to call my sister to come over, hold Molly down (she wouldn't lay still and there is no way to hold the cat steady and make sure you close the incision neatly)while I glued her up. It definitely took about ten years off my life.

Good Luck!

[jomamma]

Our cat Ellie Mae (RIP) looked just like Softie. She had been a stray when she found us and about a year after she came to live with us, she had to have surgery. She had been spayed earlier in her life but still had a heat cycle that would attract the tom cats. Our vet did the surgery which caused her to be sutured from the base of her rib cage all the way down, it was like 6-7 inches long. The vet sent her home without a 'no nibble' collar!!! I couldn't believe it. He's kind of an old school out on the farm kind of guy, and he said she'll be OK, just try to keep her from jumping on stuff. And she was, she healed just fine. I would have had to call my sister too if the incision had opened or if she'd ripped the stitches out, my sister is a Vet Tech. BTW... The reason Ellie was having a heat cycle was because she had bits and pieces of ovaries spread out in her abdomen still producing hormones. He said she may have been hit by a car at one time and had some internal injuries and possibly at that time she was spayed while they stitched her up.

[tracey]

Aww. Poor thing.

I love how she starts beating the collar up once it's off of her. That's how it looks to me, I mean, like she's taking out her pent-up aggression on her tormentor. Hahaha.