Derek responds badly to Anaesthetic

Derek and I have been hacking away at the coal face of veterinary practice today.

Yes. I finally remembered to starve her last night so that she could have her lady parts removed today.

She was about as happy as you would expect about the whole starvation thing.  About as happy as I would be if someone were to do the same to me.

Here she is pleading with me for a ‘waffer thin mince’

I confess that I would probably jump on the table less were I in this type of distress, but the levels of shouting and general moaning would be roughly the same.

Here she is, sticking her tongue out at me in utter disgust:

This morning I folded her into the cat basket and set off.  I filled out a form to say that I would not sue the vet if they accidentally turned her into a three toed sloth or a hanging basket, and that they could have all my worldly wealth upon my return.

I shot off to go and do my round of visits.  After coffee and biscuits with Kim, and a late lunch with my friend Diane which I didn’t think I would be able to fit in, but it turns out I did (hoorah! I am always a fan of lunch however late), I called the vet and they told me I could pick Derek up any time after four.

We trundled to the vet to find one seriously miserable cat wearing one of those gigantic, cone shaped head collars, and sporting a large bald patch on her midriff.  She was utterly devastated at the indignity, and turned her back on me in the basket, aloof and woeful, all the way home in the car.

When I undid the door of the basket she galloped out, and then proceeded to go totally berserk.

I was entirely unprepared for this.  The vet had been quite clear when I picked her up that she would be woozy, very sleepy and entirely unfit for anything other than a light chicken broth and being fanned with a copy of Cat Fancier’s Weekly (First for Cats).

She said nothing about her rotating frenziedly around the house backwards, dragging and bumping her head and collar about like they weighed eighteen tonnes each, and then backing into all the furniture.

Or the fact that the collar was so massive that when she went to have a drink of water after an exhaustive backwards gymnastics routine, she couldn’t get her face near the bowl.

I called the vet. She said that I was to persevere with the collar.  She said that Derek would become acclimatised to the collar.    She said I could take the collar off so that Derek could eat, but that she should stay in the collar for ten days.

I was dubious about this.

Fifteen minutes after the vet had said this, Derek had removed the collar entirely and run away into the hills of the Spare Oom.

I had a minor panic and rang my mum, the arch bishop of Canterbury, a man called Jim and the vet in that order.

Eventually I took Derek back to the vet.

This was not a popular choice on the part of the Cat Liberation Party.  I have the scratches to prove it.  I started trying to lure Derek into her basket soothingly, by laying a trail of ham.

This did not work.

I tried folding her gently in.

I tried nudging her in.

I tried making loud shooing noises.

Nothing worked.

Eventually I tipped the basket on its end and thrust a squirming Derek into the bottom, slamming the door shut.

As I turned it the right way up Derek fought like a ninja trapped in a washing machine on spin cycle.  It was all scything, knife sharp claws and the gleam of a deadly eye.

When it was the right way up I looked into the basket in consternation.

Derek was not the right way up.

Derek was hanging like a bat from the ceiling of the basket, tail swishing and swearing like a pro.

I shook the basket gently.

She hung on.

She fell off the roof of the basket half way to the car.

The whole time this was happening I was trying not to think too hard about the state of her stitches.

I got to the vets.

They offered to put a more secure plastic cone on her head.  I said no.  Derek has a single minded, ruthless streak a mile wide, and I fear that she would go to any lengths to remove any sort of head collar, including learning to grow opposable thumbs and opening the knife drawer.

The vet wasn’t happy.  I pointed out that I have never taken a cat to be spayed before where they had been given a collar.  Always in the past they have been given a dressing and sent home.  I asked for a dressing.

I was warned that it would not stay on.  I felt that it was worth a try and would be less damaging to her and our health and stress levels if we tried it.

Half way home in the car she had the edge of the dressing off.

Ten minutes at home and she had taken half of it off.

It was at this point that she clambered onto the kitchen table and fell asleep.

I took this opportunity to do a little DIY patchwork job on the dressing.  All I had in the way of plasters were some large pirate motif ones.  I stuck one on Derek’s side.

She woke up almost immediately, and after a little light savaging of Tallulah’s tiara, zoomed around the house in a welter of dust, fur and bits of sticking plaster.  I am so glad I didn’t get around to cleaning the house this week.

I would have been furious if it had been pristine.  As it was I was more in a mood of resigned superstress.  That level of stress that goes beyond getting anxious about things and into the realms of Zen.

She skidded across the kitchen floor, unearthed a spider, played with it until it got squashed onto her paw, and then ate it.

I reminded her that the vet had said she was to eat a lightly poached chicken breast.

She flicked me the V’s and ran off to do more evil:

If we survive the weekend with the stitches and my sanity intact, it will be a minor miracle.