the patient continues to heal

Our little patient continues to improve by leaps and bounds.

Her first night at home, I finally managed to get some pain meds into her, though she wasn't happy about being "scruffed". Still, I was able to get to sleep feeling less guilty. There's a funny balance here (and it's a long-time theme in our relationship) between caring for her and keeping her stress levels down.

Yesterday morning, her first morning home, her collar was off, lying somewhere on the floor. That Kris (one of the techs) just wasn't mean enough when she put it on, I guess.

Koa's loving being out of her collar. I noticed her bandage/cast got dirty immediately, but she's actually keeping that -- and the rest of herself -- clean. I figure that as long as she leaves her bandage on, I'm fine with the collar being off. So far, so good.

In the morning, Koa hid under the bed, but she wanted desperately to be petted, so I reached way under, where she was out of "scruffing" range. She purred loudly. She even wanted to play with a toy while lying on her side. I wiggled it, she batted at it.

Last night, she was delighted when I came home and rolled around in ecstacy on the bed while I sat and worked on a puzzle and petted her. Later in the evening, though, when she was getting nice and relaxed, I tried to scruff her again quickly for another dose of pain meds. She got so mad that she hid under the bed and only came up onto the bed again after I was asleep. And I didn't get the meds into her. Now she's running away from me when I approach her.

So we're continuing to work on trust issues. I think she's very quickly becoming a lot happier than she was pre-surgery, which means that she was in a tremendous amount of constant pain before. There's that balance again. We do the best we can, both of us.

I called the vet yesterday to ask about how much to feed her, given that she's eating soft wet food exclusively for at least the next week, and that represents a change in her diet. When they got back to me, they said "two pouches twice a day, then bring her back in a month for a reweighing and we'll adjust as necessary."

That suggestion felt so invalidating for me. Just because she's out of pain doesn't mean it'll be easy to get her into a crate. It's like they haven't been listening *at all*. The vet tech did backpedal a bit, saying "We'll be taking these things one day at a time." Encouragingly, he also said, "I think you'll see an entirely different cat emerge once she heals." Of course, she was perfectly well behaved in the hospital, so I can see why they think I'm exaggerating, but then again she was scared out of her mind when she was there, and she's known to be good in a cage.

My plan is to give her most of a pouch twice a day, reserving 1-2 TBS for Theo. It seems so unfair to prepare food in front of him that he then doesn't get to eat. So a little bit of sharing is definitely in order. And actually, the cats are used to free-feeding on dry food and do manage that pretty well, so I'm not worried about her gorging herself.

Robert accidentally let Theo into the room this morning. Theo rushed in and sniffed everything. Then Koa, who was under the bed, let out one huge hiss. Theo tucked tail between legs and went loping out of the room as fast as he could. It's a real pleasure to see her stand up for herself. She hasn't done that much since Theo was a kitten. Perhaps we'll see a more even-handed form of rough-housing once they're reunited.

I'm tired -- it's been hard to go to sleep and then there have been some overnight interruptions. And of course, my antennae are way up right now, so that the interruptions are waking me up. I am starting to relax as Koa comes more into her own. We will get through this. We may even sail through it.

Small update: I just went to pet Koa and she did not run away. She let me rub her head and then went back to sleep. Phew.