Noel Update

Noel (aka Frankenkitty) is now resting comfortably.  She came home from surgery Monday afternoon wearing a sweater made of gauze.  The vet told me to keep it on her so she would not try to groom her incision.  They gave me an Elizabethan collar in case the sweater came off.  Apparently Noel was not a fan of the gauze sweater fashion statement.  She wriggled out of it as soon as I got her home from the vet.

The sweater came off to reveal thirty staples, four tubes, and countless stitches.  The bizarre part was that she seemed totally unfazed.  After she took her sweater off, she was happy as a clam.  She walked right up to me and started purring. 

The purring stopped when I started chasing her around the room with the Elizabethan collar.  After cornering her in the bathroom (with the baby screaming from the other room), I was able to slip the collar over her head.  She was pissed.  Have you ever put clothing on a cat?  If you haven't, you should know that they walk backwards.  I don't get it, but they do.  After walking around the bathroom backwards for at least five minutes, Noel decided to pout underneath my bed.

Later that evening, I bribed her out with some vanilla ice cream (the only thing she likes more is string cheese).  I set her up on the end of my bed with her favorite blanket and she forgave me for putting the collar on her.

The craziest thing about all of this is that she is more bothered by the collar than the fact that she had a fourth of her mid-section removed.  It is amazing how resilient she is. She is happily knocking things off of my bedside table just like before.  She even managed to drink out of the toilet a day after surgery. 

At this point the only thing we can do is wait and see if the cancer makes a reappearance.  Unfortunately, it does come back in over 70% of cases.  I consider the surgery a success because at the very least, I have bought her time and the knowledge that I did what I could to help her.

This whole experience has made me realize how fragile humans are in comparison to animals.  If anything comparable happened to me, I would be in the hospital for weeks  The only real advantage we have is our intelligence (and sometimes that's questionable).