Snowy’s Operation

Thank you all again for your concern over Snowy and sorry for the delay in this post, life took over for a bit again.

Five o’clock (Friday) came and I was at the vets as arranged; Snowy was brought out in the arms of the vet. She was still not fully awake from the anaesthetic, but she was awake enough to meow and growl all the way home though.

There is a saying in the UK, “the lights are on but there is no-one at home”, which described Snowy perfectly. Her eyes were fully dilated but she had no real idea of what was she was doing. She did think she needed the litter tray but once she got in it she did her customary turn a rounds, slightly lost her balance and basically gave up and fell into a sort of sleep. Thankfully apart from some mud on the rim where I'd moved it with my boot, it was clean.



She also wanted to walk round the house but her back legs were not really holding her. She’d come up to an object and attempt to go round or over it and just collapse, quite often on her back with her paws in the air unable to figure out how to get up.

I had been due to go out that evening but had cancelled; I’m so glad I did. There was no way I would have been happy leaving her even if she was caged. She spent from 5 to gone 11 pm either being held on my lap until she fell back into a sleep or with me following round after her if she decided she just had to go for a walk. I had to be there, ether to pick her up or to stop her trying to jump up onto chairs and more importantly to stop her falling down all the steps in my house. It may be essentially a bungalow but nearly every room is on a different level and some of the steps are deep.

Come 11 pm I needed to sleep so I put her back into the pet carrier, much to her disgust, and placed her next to me on the bed. She was not happy to be caged again but did fall back to sleep.

I was awakened by her at about 5 am when I heard her grooming herself so I got her out for another drink etc. She was still very unsteady on her back legs so after about an hour, we both went back to bed for another couple of hours.

By the morning I was happy to leave her in the house for an hour and a half while I went out and now, Sunday morning, she’s more or less back to normal although she does know how to play the ‘I’m hurt, I need more milk’ look really well and has really relished the extra attention she has been getting.

I was really pleased that the vet didn’t have to take off as much of her ear as I feared and I was also surprised that she wasn’t given an antibiotic injection either. Instead I was instructed to bathe the wound three times a day with iodine but to bring her back immediately if I felt there was an infection. I’m quite pleased about that really, partially because it reduces the cost but mainly because it should mean that if she does need an antibiotic shot the chances of resistant bugs should be lower and she’s also quite happy for me to dab the iodine onto the ear.

She goes back to the vet in a fortnight to have the stitches out but she’s now sitting on my lap purring as I type this, back to normal, and as a bonus, I can touch her ear without her protesting, something I couldn’t do when it had the growth on it.