Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Scamper at 4 months

We've been having a great time with our newest member of the family.  His name sure suits him - he scampers here and there all day long (and at night - well let's just say it doesn't make sleeping out in the living room much fun according to my daughter and her friend!).  Last week we took him to the clinic to be neutered.  Poor husband was pretty sad about it, but both he and the cat bounced back just fine.

Since it's a low cost clinic we all showed up at four to pick up our pets and the clinic manager gave us all one big speech about after care.  The main things I gleaned were to keep him in his crate for an hour after getting home to let some of the drugs leave his system and help him calm down.  Then to keep him in an enclosed space for a couple days to keep him from running around and jumping.  Finally to wear his e-collar for two weeks to keep him from licking at his incisions.  What follows is what really happened.

We arrived home and I left Scamper in the crate to help settle him down.  He proceeded to bang that silly cone against the front and sides of the cage.  I covered the cage to encourage him to rest.  Finally it got quiet.  Then I saw the bottom of the blanket moving around.  I lifted the blanket to see him - without the cone of shame, poking his front legs through the wires.  Well, we made it about 25 minutes so I took him out and re-tied the cone on.  We put him in the bathroom with his litter box and a comfy blanket and shut the door.  More banging and meowing.  He did not want to be left in there alone at all!  The banging got louder and we suddenly heard the squeek of the medicine cabinet door opening.

The little mischief had jumped up on the cabinet and was making a mess!  I put things away, set the laundry basket on the toilet to discourage him from jumping up again and left him alone.  5 minutes later we heard the laundry basket hit the floor.  Obviously, he did not get the memo about warm, safe, dry and clean because he wanted out of there.  I decided that maybe some dinner would settle him down.  I gave him a quarter can of wet cat food and he quickly downed that and wanted more.  He ended up eating the entire can of food!  Since the plastic cone was making him miserable I created a softer one out of timtex and fabric.  He seemed to struggle against that one less, so we let him stay out and he proceeded to go about his usual evening routine of terrorizing us and attacking our hands and arms and feet.  Finally he went to sleep in a chair.  We all went to bed and hoped he would behave during the night.  We were very happy to find him with his lovely new cone on in the morning!



Frankly, I don't think he ever really realized that he had any reason to slow down.  After three days he outsmarted the cone and we retired it.  He's been a normal happy cat ever since and is healing up well.  He sure has grown a lot since we first got him and is becoming quite the handsome young man.  We sure enjoy having his mischievous self around and look forward to lots of playing and cuddling with our Scamper!  He's hard to get a good picture of because he's always moving - that camera loop is so tempting...

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