post-op kitty....

My cat is drunk.

Ok, not drunk. More like drugged out. And not happy.

I took her to get spayed today. She is now an it. Dropped her off this morning around 8am. Ran some errands (scored a Wii at Target, which will be going on eBay in about an hour), put together a piece of furniture (which will probably be another blog post). Got a call from the vet around 2:30 that she was OK and to pick her up at 5.

So I did. When I picked her up, they told me that she was still coming off the anestisia and offered to keep her overnight free of charge. I decided to take her home - I didn't want her spending the night there, then having to pick her up before work, dump her off at home, and go to work for 14 hours (I'm scheduled to work OT tomorrow night). I figured at least if I take her home, she'll have some time to get used to the house again before I go to work.

The vet suggested that I leave her in her cat carrier until 7 or so, then give her some time before I give her water, food, or her medicine. She has to take an antibiotic and a pain medicine.

She started getting pretty fiesty in her carrier around 7:30, so I brought her downstairs and let her out. She stumbled around for a while, not quite getting the sequence of when to put what leg where, then took a long pee, which reminded me of that scene in Austin Powers where he gets out of being frozen).

Then she went to sleep, so I snuck out and grabbed some food. Went back down to the family room where I'm keeping her (it has a door that closes, plus her food/water/litterbox is there - the vet said to leave her in one room so she doesn't climb stairs and risk falling or pulling her stitches more).

Went back down to spend some time with her, but she went back to sleep, so I snuck back out and did some more stuff. Went back down around 8:30 to put out her food bowl and give her her medication.

I'm not sure how much of it actually went in. I pretty much ended up holding her, sticking the syringe near her mouth, and waiting for her to open her mouth and yell to discharge it. I think most of it went in, although at least some of her antibiotic ended up on her face.

I've got to keep it up every 12 hours, which is not going to be fun. I really hope that I'm able to get enough of the medication in her that she doesn't get an infection or anything. So far she's been sleeping most of the time, although she did already got out the door and ran up the stairs one of the times I left the room - typical Nibbler, and I had to carry her back down - which is tough, because she's got stitches on her belly, and I usually just grab her there. I had to try grabbing her in front of her front legs and then behind her butt, and she screamed her kitty head off - hopefully just because she didn't like the way I was holding her, and not because I was pulling on the stitches.

I know this falls under the "for her own good" category, and hopefully it will also calm her down a bit, maybe make her stop trying to go outside every time I open the door. But right now it's hard watching her be out of it and be in some pain, and to hope that she'll be OK.

One thing not everyone knows about me is that I had open heart surgery when I was four. I was too young to really understand that that was a big deal, that it was risky, and that without it I would be dead. My parents were strong through it all, and never let me realize how dangerous it was. I've never really thought about how hard it must have been for them, or appreciated how much they must have gone through at the time, how difficult it must have been to see there son go into surgery and wonder if he would come out, hooked up to machines, having to take medicine all the time. I mean, if I'm this worried about a cat - a cat who inflicts pain on me on a daily basis, and I have the claw marks and bites on my hands to prove it - I can't imagine how difficult it must have been when it was their child.