chita gets the chop

[dragonlady7]

I keep forgetting. Tomorrow Chita goes in for her surgery. Eeeh, my poor kitty's getting eviscerated.
She's so hyper and cute and silly lately. I hope she recovers and is OK again. I wouldn't mind if she chilled out a tiny bit... but I still don't really want her to change. She's been so good lately.

When I pick her up and hold her upside-down sometimes (it stops her tearing around the house) I like to rub her belly with my face. I've noticed that her hair grows so that there's a seam down the middle, as if there's a concealed zipper. I keep threatening her that I'll unzip her if she doesn't calm down. She stares at me, paws in the air, eyes wide, tail thrashing, and when I put my nose down to rub the zipper on her chest she bats my head with her paws, claws retracted, and pretends to attack my face.

Kitty is the cutest. I am sorry to subject her to a painful medical procedure but conventional wisdom holds, it's for her own good. She is no longer so tiny-- she's probably 6 pounds now-- so I can now begin to see how on earth a surgeon would be able to differentiate among her tiny organs. And I know, she's so big now and demanding of attention, that she'll certainly go into estrus soon. Everyone assures me I don't want that: I believe them.

Last night Z and I cleaned out the bedroom-- it needs one more coat of paint on the edges of two of the walls, and one more full coat on one of the walls, and another full coat on most of the trim, and three coats on the one window-- but for the most part, it's done. So I swept the floor, used solvent (Goof Off) to remove paint spots, got myself kinda high accidentally (I'm noticing a lot more inflammatory response in my nose and trachea, like asthma but including my sinuses, when I do stupid things, either from paint and solvents, or from the ammonia in the catbox (that's what else I did last night, clean that out) or from something retarded like having a drag from a cigarette-- my nose closes right up), and then mopped the floor twice. It really is a nice hardwood floor in there... So the room looks beautiful now.
Then Z and I went shopping, bought a set of plain white king-size sheets in cheap poly-cotton blend for $20, half the price of the next-cheapest set we saw in three department stores, bought me a king-size pillow, and bought me a cheap costume fedora for the calendar page.
I must get a shot of the bedroom in natural light. It's lovely, really.
And while I was mopping, Z hoed out all the cardboard from the IKEA shelves in the living room, and hauled it to the curb. The living room is mostly clean now, so we can chuck the bedframe into the bedroom and put it together tonight after we do the next bit of painting (and finish most everything but not all).
Tomorrow morning Chita goes to the vet; Saturday we pick her up and also the mattress gets delivered. Then the living room will be clear of bed parts, and we can put the closet and bedroom door back on (which are also in the living room), and then we can start moving into the bedroom, and I can stop living out of boxes in the attic.
I don't sleep well in a full bed with Z-- I've been sleeping on the couch on the back porch, but I'd wake up with my chest all tight from being basically outdoors, which I don't get-- the air is fresher, isn't it?-- but then I realized there's a full mattress and box spring in the attic, why not just set them up? So I did, and had a nice cozy little nest there, but then last night wound up snuggling with Z in his room with the air purifier on because i was so wheezy from the various chemicals I'd been using (Shit! I'm becoming one of those weirdos like the people who call me all day!) and I zonked. The hell. Out and slept in 20 minutes this morning and had to rush around.

I did pack Z a lunch. That's two days in a row now I've been clever enough to do it. Found his lunchbox, found a tupperware of lunch-sized leftovers, found a beverage, set the box by the door with the bus fare on top, and it makes him happy, or at least he says it does, and also costs less than the $7-10 a day he usually spends getting lunch from one of the local eateries... So I'm really trying to live a more organized life, and I'm only blogging such a boring thing because I know I'll want to know later that I was trying.

I really want to write that essay on how "feminism" isn't at all-- another thing drove it home for me today, somewhat irrelevant but if I could write the damn essay I'd connect it-- but I was Googling for an EPA study on Indoor Air Quality and if any of you find it I will give you $20 I swear-- there's a study that says, "Indoor air is between 2 and 5 times more polluted than the air outside," and everyone quotes it, but NOBODY HAS THE ORIGINAL, God-damn-it. But anyway. I found this pamphlet, thinking it was what I wanted. No. But. Fascinating. Here I am thinking about a $500 air purifier to remove the pollutants trapped inside my too-energy-efficient home, and this is going on.
http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pdfs/pcia_factsheet_en.pdf
Yes. Indoor air quality is worse where people burn manure in their indoor fireplace for heat and cooking. Duh.

But duh. There are other ways of life. There are other ways of life that are not necessarily bad. But which have their own problems. Women and children are disproportionately affected by this indoor air quality issue because there are still societies where "homemaker" is so vitally important that there literally must be someone who stays home to mind the fire. Think on that. Don't have time to think more on that now. Maybe I will later.

Comments

[heebiejeebie.livejournal.com]

I suggest asking the vet to give her a pain shot and send you home with pain meds. Because I certainly wouldn't want to get a ovo-hysterectomy without at least a tylenol.

And don't let the vet say to you "oh, she doesn't feel pain like humans do." because it's a load of CRAP. Just because animals don't show pain the same, doesn't mean they don't feel it.

[silverwerecat.livejournal.com]

I second that. My poor Margie suffered all night long after her operation, as the anesthetics wore off. I handled that homeopathically, but if I didn't have that choice, I'd certainly go for the pain meds.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Hm. I will ask when I pick her up, then, about what to do if she's in pain.


This office keeps all spayed patients overnight for observation, so I assume they'll be making sure she isn't suffering unduly as she first wakes up. They seem to be a very concerned and compassionate office-- though the vet himself who has dealt with her since we started going there *did* say he doesn't work on Saturdays, so I don't know who will be treating her then... I won't get her until nearly 24 hours after the operation. I hope the worst of it has passed by then.

I'm so worried she'll be scared without me, but the thing is, she really does love people, even strangers; the vet picked her up and she didn't precisely look happy, but if he petted her a minute she'd probably purr for him. So I'm telling myself I really don't need to worry about her-- she's been friendly since before we met her, and I doubt she'll be much traumatized by this, as the staff there are all very nice and affectionate toward people's pets.

Last vet visit, she was very subdued from the inoculations she'd been given. She's getting a feline lukemia booster shot along with being spayed, so we're worried that'll drag her down along with the operation. I sort of hope that she *is* a bit subdued, just so she doesn't injure herself-- but I don't know how she'll be. I've never had a female cat.

[eveiya.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Chita will be fine - I had Skye (aged 7) spayed in August there, and although it's worse for older cats and the vet said her uterus was larger than it should have been, she recovered very quickly. She chose to keep relatively still and just sleep a lot for the first couple of days after the op but was back to her normal self by the third day. Any pain they feel is purely from the incision, which in a normal spaying is less than an inch long in the cat's side. Skye's scar was quite well healed by the third day, at which point she decided it was time to start removing her stiches with her teeth! Itching during the healing process seems to be the biggest problem - on the vet's advice, I managed to get some wipes at the petshop impregnated with soothing but bitter-tasting stuff to rub on the area of the wound to discourage her from licking and pulling the stitches. I only regret not getting both my female cats spayed when they were Chita's age; I wasn't really aware of the high risk of pyometra in later life for cats that aren't spayed and aren't having kittens, and as a result Tabitha nearly died at age 12 from an infected uterus a few months back and Skye probably went through a worse operation than she might have. Their coming on heat regularly wasn't a problem for me or apparently for them, but cats' uteruses are not self-cleansing like ours are, and if female cats are not frequently pregnant throughout their lives as they're designed to be, infection can build up in the uterus over a period of years without obvious symtoms before causing sudden, severe illness - exactly as happened with Tabs.

I love that "zip" ridge of fur that Gem and Leo have down the middle of their bellies. Can't really see it the same in Skye and Tabs, who both have longer fur. Also, Tabs and Skye are none too keen on their bellies being touched, whereas Leo and Gem love it and flip for the purpose - they'll slowly keel over upside down as I approach them, waiting for a belly rub.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Funny-- the vet asked this morning if we had questions, and i mentioned the wipes you had talked about, and he said "I would never recommend anything like that" and went on about not introducing foreign substances to a wound. He was like, a vet would never tell her to do that, etc. etc. ... Doctors are so funny about that kind of thing. He then went on to reassure me that most cats don't have problems with itching but if Chita did he'd advise me what to do.
OK then!
Chita is very much a belly-rubs cat. Every day when we open the door she's waiting inside-- there's an entry way and then it steps up slightly into the kitchen, and she'll be at the top of the step, and rub her cheek along the step and flop over, and fall off the step because she's too far over. Every day, without fail, she greets us by falling off the step in slow-mo. I think she's trying to train us to catch her but Dave is usually in front of me and misses her every time. I don't know which of us is the dumb one in this situation.

I'm glad to know about the uterus infection thing! I still have guilt, you know, because it's such major surgery, but it's elective, and omg, etc., there is nothing a woman of this decade can't find to be guilty over. So now I can say, "Well, she may just have gotten a fatal infection in a decade anyway!" when I think how they made me sign a paper authorizing them to rescusitate her if the anaesthetic stops her heart.

Also the vet said she was the cutest ever and cuddled her like a baby as he took her away, so I felt a little better about leaving her there.

[silverwerecat.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind if she chilled out a tiny bit

Methinks the "calming down after snip-snip" is just another myth. *points at icon* None of mine have changed much. Heck, the boys are still trying to do the girls, and sometimes other boys as well...Those who are calm and nice were nice to begin with, like my Lugh. That angel of a cat hasn't hissed once in his six years.

Kiss Chita from me. I hope everything goes well too. :)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I think the only thing that really changes is that they get fat faster!!

I'm trying to decide whether I should keep feeding her kitten chow, or if I should transition her to adult cat food. Lots of people say there's no difference, but she's an only child, so I am overly fussy. ;)