Franken-Kitty

The good news? Tabitha made it through her surgery a-ok. The bad news? She is the world’s worst patient. It’s hard to nurse a cat, they have no incentive to listen to reason. All she knows is that she’s uncomfortable and that she hates her elizabethan collar, aka the cone of shame. She also hates being cooped up in our bedroom. There have been a lot of plaintive meows and scratchings at the door. I’d like to explain to her that it’s in her best interest to not have our other cat jumping on her head while she’s recovering, because I’m pretty sure that she thinks that we’re punishing her. We actually gave up around 3 or 4 this morning and moved her into our guest room. There was no reason for everyone to be awake and miserable in the middle of the night.

When I first picked her up, she was still slightly groggy from the anesthesia. I knew that she was out of it, because she didn’t cry once during the car ride home. And this cat wails from the moment you put her into her cat carrier until the moment you let her out. Once I got her home, she spent a long time stumbling around and walking into things. It would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been so sad. I got a little worried when she kept climbing up on the bed and jumping off, only to end up flipping over completely in the air. Luckily, she always managed to land on her feet.

The surgery itself seems to have been successful. Her face is slightly freaky looking, because they shaved the whole side of it. And they had to do quite a bit of cutting, so she has a lot of stitches. I suppose that, when you have a tiny cat head, any amount of stitches is a lot of stitches. If you look at her from her good side, she looks perfectly normal. And then she turns her head and…. AhhhhHHH! Truth be told, she looks an awful lot like Frankenstein’s Monster. Which is why I won’t be posting any real pictures.

The worst part is that she figured out that she can use the side of her litter box to pull the elizabethan collar off. Which, while adorably clever, also means that she basically sticks her entire head in kitty litter. This is not only disgusting, it can’t be good for her sutures. After weighing the pros and cons, we decided to take the collar off of her. We figured, she was going to get the cone off eventually, at least this way she doesn’t bathe her surgery site in, well, you know. So far, she hasn’t scratched at her sutures, so hopefully we won’t regret this decision.

We’ve been keeping an eye on her. My innate paranoia means that this is one kitty who will be very carefully monitored. She’s also getting plenty of head scratches, albeit on only one side of her face. She was standoffish when she first got home, but once the anesthesia really started to wear off, she got pretty snuggly. I’m trying to enjoy our snuggles, even if it does feel a bit like cuddling up to Boris Karloff. Unfortunately, she smells something fierce. I can’t tell if it’s eau de vet or if she’s just not cleaning herself properly. Either way, phew! Stinky kitty! We can give her a bath in a few weeks, once she heals up. I sincerely hope that it doesn’t come to that.

We find out the biopsy results in the next few days. I will be mentally chanting “Benign! benign! benign!” until we get the call from the vet.

Thank you all so much for your good thoughts and well wishes. It means more than you can imagine to have so many people pulling for my kitty. I’m sure it would mean a lot to her if she knew what the internet was. As it is, she just knows that my laptop is a warm place to sleep.

Fingers crossed that this is the end of it!