Tell me this isn’t just a heart-breaking sight. Go on, click on the little picture to see a bigger depiction of a pathetic little kitty (no cracks about the size of Domino or there will be trouble. Like Cartman, he’s not fat he’s big-boned.).
After getting him home, Cat had a relatively easy time of it… at first. But Domino was pretty tired, and not feeling good enough to do much. Later, we tried a particular recommendation of our vet by putting a toddler’s T-shirt on him. Yeah. That suggestion had the capacity to make me lose my faith in our vet, because I think he would rather us jam a chew toy in his ass than wear that shirt. We quickly removed it because a) he was going to get it off sooner or later and b) his gyrations would surely have caused more harm to his stitches than it was worth. Plan B.
We initially thought maybe we’d just keep a close eye on him and gently encourage him to leave the damned stitches alone. Sure. Doing research on the web yielded the common solution (even for cats, which surprised me) of a so-called “elizabethan collar”, otherwise affectionately known as a lamp shade. So, I figured I’d zip past the ol’ pet store and pick one up on the way home from work and we’d be set. As it turns out, I didn’t have that luxury. Domino got a little more frisky as the day went on, and Cat had her hands full trying to keep him from chewing his incision while keeping her own skin intact (he’s a sweetie, but he was getting ticked). So, bolt early from work, pick up the collar and head home. That picture above is about an hour in to the period of adjustment.
He was a good sport getting it on, but it was pretty heart-wrenching seeing him at first. He must have backed up about 30 linear feet, bouncing off things and generally dissatisfied with life. Eventually he tired himself and took a load off for a while looking like a whipped dog, which of course made us feel just dandy. He’s sleeping upstairs right now, with Cat keeping a close eye on him. We devised a wonderful setup whereby Domino gets the upstairs part during the beginning of his convalescence and Pippin gets the downstairs, with a wonderful apparatus separating the upstairs landing from the stairwell providing an effective demilitarized zone so they can reintroduce themselves (read: hiss) safely.
This’ll be a long week and a half until he gets those stitches out. But that collar should help immensely. I’m just glad he’s back.
"Byte Whore" Says:October 9th, 2002 at 6:40 am
If I had a picture of Dugan right now, you’d see about the same thing.
She just had a lump removed from her left hip. In fact, this is the second operation (she had 3 other fatty growths removed about 2 years ago).
You should have no worries.
ColdForged Says:October 10th, 2002 at 8:28 am
Poor Dugan! Yeah, this one was entirely fatty as well. What was worrisome was when the vet examined him, she thought that there were harder lumps within the growth. As it turns out, there wasn’t =).
Hope Dugan recovers soon. Domino still looks pretty hangdog, but at least he navigates furniture a little better now.