On the limit of post-operative instructions…

When you leave the vet’s office after one of your little furballs has surgery, they send you home with a post-op care sheet. In theory, this paperwork will tell you what to do, what issues to be on the lookout for, and how to handle some basic situations if they crop up. The post-op sheet isn’t and can’t be an exhaustive reference.

The reason I know this is because it doesn’t address, in any way, the scenario I was faced with this morning. By yesterday evening, Cordelia seems to have overcome her post-surgery lethargy. I’ve seen her eating, drinking, and eliminating – all the things you’re supposed to monitor as your patient recovers.

I don’t suppose any read ahead material really prepares you for starting the day to realize that sometime during the night, the kitten has gone head first into her food dish and smeared food around the circumference of the cone. She also managed to get the edge of the cone into her litter and had that clumped to the cone.

Under normal circumstances (or perhaps with a normal kitten), you might be tempted to think I’d just remove the cone, clean it up, and then put it back on her. The thing is, Cordy remains what I politely like to call selectively feral. She’ll accept being touched on her terms, but when I initiate it, she’s off like a rocket to the nearest available hiding place. She simply will not be “handled.” Thanks to her slight build, those places are most often under things like the bed or dresser and therefore bloody inconvenient places from which to try extracting her.

This leaves me in a bit of a conundrum. I don’t want to put her in a position where she can defile her sutures, but overall, I wonder which is better, removing the cone, cleaning it, and most likely being unable to put her back in it, or leaving her to wander the house for the next week with a crud encrusted cone?

Yeah, there are definitely things the post-op instructions don’t cover.