Spayed cat

Question
I hope you can answer this(: i just got my little baby girl spayed and she doesnt seem to be hurting. They said they gave her a shot of pain medication and thats it. They didnt give us any medicine. But i just want this to be as comfortable for her as it can. Shes having some troubles with the cone and she keeps pulling it off. We tighten it but then i feel like were choking her. And we dont want that! We live in a small condo and the vet told us to try to keep her in a room where there is little to no jumping. But we only have 4 rooms and in all rooms theres high places to jump. And she keeps jumping on and off of the couch.

Answer
Rosie,

I'm somewhat surprised that your vet didn't send you home with an oral pain medication to give your cat over the next week or so - our vet usually sends us home with an oral medication for a week after spay/neuter surgery. One thing that I must stress is that you NEVER give the cat any human medications UNLESS your vet directs you to do so.

If you're able to watch your cat you can try taking the cone off - if she doesn't pay any attention to her incision site then perhaps you can only use the cone when she can't be supervised or forego it altogether. I would watch for signs of redness, swelling or irritation around the incision site, but in addition to that I would watch for drainage of any kind - if the incision seems moist or has drainage she needs to be seen by the vet because drainage is a sign of a potential infection and your cat may need antibiotics.

When the vet says to try and limit her activity post surgically all you can really do is TRY - you can't prevent her from hopping up on the sofa or the bed or similar pieces of furniture unless you were to confine her to a kennel which at this point doesn't sound like it's necessary. As long as she's behaving reasonably (as in not bouncing off the walls and heading for the tops of the china cabinet she should be fine) and she continues to eat, drink, use her litterbox and behave normally I would say that she's fine. Kittens are normally kind of busy even after being spayed or neutered, just check her incision site regularly to ensure that she isn't swollen and that the incision hasn't opened up.

If you notice that she seems lethargic or irritable play it safe and take her back to the vet to be examined because she may be painful or there may be some sort of issue with her surgical site. If your cat seems at all uncomfortable I wouldn't hesitate to go back to your vet and specifically ask for an oral pain reliever for your cat because you have to keep in mind that a spay is major surgery so I would expect her to experience some degree of discomfort post surgically and to my knowledge the injection of pain medicine that she had while she was in the hospital is probably only good for a day or two post surgically.

If you have any further questions or concerns please don't hesitate to contact me again at any time - I'm more than happy to help in any way that I can.

Kind regards,

Ali