Doing Well After Surgery

Apologies for the brief absence, I had to catch up on work obligations. Sadly, work places do not recognize cats as family members and provide appropriate leave.

Castiel is doing really well. After a rough night in which he doggedly tore off his collar several times during the night, we eventually decided that he would be wearing a onesie overnight. This has happily allowed us all to sleep. We gave up on sleeping in the recovery room with him because he was so unhappy not being around his siblings and in the usual upstairs bedrooom.   We carry him up the staircase — no more stairs for him until his stiches are out — and tuck him in with us. His siblings Clover and Aleksandr curl up on the bed also – Clover beside him and Aleksandr on the pillows. Clover has been giving him daily baths or at least bathing his uncovered spots anyway. We put easy ramps and steps around the bed and padded the whole area with extra pillows and blankets to make it easy for him to get down to his litter box. He has figured out the litter box and all seems well. Low boxes with a cut out front work well.

He has finished his anti-inflammatory medicine and we removed the Fentanyl patch yesterday, now he is on the Buprenex and Gabapentin. They seem to be controlling his pain. We’ve been feeding him lots of liquidy cat foods to help prevent constipation. Castiel just wants everything to be back to normal. He is walking around fairly well. We’re amazed he has figured things out so quickly. We’re still waiting on the pathology report. Fingers crossed we get clean margins. We will be looking into getting a radiation therapy consult probably at U.C. Davis as the only other place that does this that we know of is in Campbell, which is far enough away that we don’t really know where it is — somewhere past San Jose, I think. Castiel doesn’t do well in the car. He gets super scared. We don’t know if we will do radiation but we want to at least learn more about it. It’s horrendously expensive but if we need to do it, we’ll find a way.

Castiel and his siblings survived Halloween — all three hid under the bed together. They hate the doorbell and the children’s voices were all the horror they needed.  We have scaredy cats. Although, Castiel enjoyed pumpkin carving. He loves watching me clean out the pumpkins and  carve them, then he likes to sniff them and check them out. Facebook sent me a reminder of Castiel as a kitty checking out a pumpkin. Thank you everyone for your continued check-ins and comments, they are really helping us all through this process.