We just had our young cat spayed. We got the usual directions about limiting activity, gradually reintroducing food, etc. She was a little unsteady for a very short while, but soon became her usual self. Limit activity? Hah. As if.
My question is this: After a human has major surgery, like a hysterectomy, which is the same as the spay operation, the last thing that person wants to do is get up and run about. We have to be cajoled into moving around. Our cat seems to have no pain or discomfort. How come?
I’ve seen critters come in with injuries that would have incapacitated a human days earlier.
Try to keep your cat from jumping on the furniture, just so she doesn’t open her sutures. Make sure she can urinate and deficate successfully. Should know for sure by tomorrow morning. Thanks for not littering!
Many animals also instinctively hide injuries and illness.
It’s a constant problem for bird owners, for example - birds hide symptoms until they’re just about dead. They are certainly in pain and suffering, and if they think themselves unobserved they’ll act like it, but as soon as they know you’re looking at them they’re up and chirping like nothing’s wrong.
Good luck on the first. She’s a frisky critter. She used the litter box within an hour of arriving home. We did keep her best friend, the dog (really) from playing with her.
I’m sure she’ll be fine. It’s just so weird that within less than half a day she WANTS to run and jump. I’ve never felt like that after a surgery. I know animals hide when in pain and have seen a couple of examples of that. But she wasn’t hiding; she wanted to run and play!
I was wondering if our being bipedal made these things worse somehow, but I can’t see why it would.
At least with my dog, who had surgery for gastric torsion and about a 10" incision up his belly, personality doesn’t change much because of a little invasive surgery.
He is active and happy, borderline obnoxious at times, and even bandaged around his entire midsection, he still aimed to please and do his job as my jester. He did sleep more initially, the meds were still wearing off, but I did have to be still myself to encourage him to be still.
It was the 3 or 4 times when he did go back to his old self before completely healing when his sutures opened back up. I think that’s really the danger. I actually got turned away from the emergency vet at 11pm because “there was nothing they could do.” Are you kidding me? I ended up reaching a grocery store about 2 minutes after they closed and begging them to let me buy first aid supplies and wrapped him up myself until the morning.
His wound opened up a few more times after that, mostly from being impatient and not letting me help him out of the car, and from trying to take the steps like Rocky.
Whatever you can do to chillax your animal until the sutures are not likely to reopen, I highly recommend it. Elizabethan collars ARE the new black, but you don’t want them wearing them longer than they have to.