Xena the Coneheaded Cat is loving, friendly, sociable and sweet. She is also single-minded in her determination to reach her post-spay sutures by any possible means. She scrapes at them with the edge of her Elizabethan collar. She reaches for them with her front and back feet, stretching her own belly flesh to pull them closer. It’s driving us crazy.
She visited the vet three times last week. The first time, the vet wrapped her midsection with bandages, turning her into Xena the Wasp-Waisted Conehead, and prescribed a week’s worth of antibiotics. By the time my husband took her back to the vet the next day, Xena had managed to yank her bandages up and reach her sutures anyway. That was it for the wrapping.
By the time I took her back to the vet the third time, she was looking better. She made it through the weekend okay and I hoped that she had finally decided to leave her sutures alone.
This morning as I was getting ready for work, Xena jumped up on the bathroom counter and put her paws on my shoulder for a hug. I sneaked a look at her belly and saw sutures askew around an ugly, unhealed spot. Criminy.
The vet has already said that in the 35 years he’s been in practice, he’s never seen a cat mess with its sutures so relentlessly. Pain pills don’t deter her, nor does the collar. Oddly, she acts as though she feels perfectly fine in every other way.
I’m taking an early lunch today to bring her back to the vet yet again. It’s possible they’ll have to actually replace some of her sutures.
If she could just chill out for another week, she’d be healed and ready to resume her cone-free lifestyle. It’s too bad you can’t reason with a creature with a brain the size of a Brazil nut.
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