Neither of my cats required an Elizabethan Collar post-neutering (obviously your kitty’s hernia is a different matter).
However - our older cat had a spot on his side, just behind his shoulder, that he licked constantly, to the point where the fur was gone and the skin went bloody then necrotic. We had to have a wedge of the skin surgically removed - and the minute those metal stitches were removed, he went right back to it. What finally worked was to put him in a plastic “lampshade” collar - which he wore nonstop for literally months. Yes, he learned to eat with it. Poor guy couldn’t groom himself and got quite itchy, which made him unhappy, but better that than dying of a skin infection or bleeding all over our furniture.
Finally the side healed enough that we removed the collar. He went right back to the spot. Light bulb went off in vet’s head: they gave us a bottle of stuff intended to spray on bandages to prevent animals from gnawing on bandages. One or two squirts directly on that fur, and he was completely conditioned away from it after going for it once or twice.
Anyway, that is a possibility for your guy - a spritz of this stuff near his hernia incision and he’ll lick it… once. Of course he’ll foam at the mouth and make a “yucky face” which is funny in a cruel-pet-owner sort of way…