Kitty

My poor baby was spayed today. I felt like the worst "kitten mommy" in the whole world this morning. She had to fast before surgery, and Vixen woke up hungry. We have our morning routine, and I always feed her as soon as I come in from feeding the goats. So, I came in and she was sitting and waiting by her dish. I had to walk past her, and ignore the fact that she wanted breakfast. She was so perplexed. She looked at me, looked at the empty dish, meowed a LOT, walked around and rubbed around my ankles in case I needed a reminder that she was there and didn't I realize she needed her breakfast? It made me so sad. After a few minutes of not getting fed, she resorted to sniffing around the kitchen floor apparently trying to track down a few stray crumbs of something or other, because that poor kitty was hungry.

And then....that look she gave me when I scooped her up and stuffed her into the cat carrier. She was horrified. I was the Mommy who took care of her, spoiled her, and catered to her every whim. Now I was a monster who starved her, and stuffed her into the hateful cage to take her to the "Bad Place". It broke my heart. But Vixen, at only 4 1/2 months, went into heat this week. I didn't think cats could go into heat that young, but according to my vet, it does happen. Apparently, cats can have up to 2 litters of kittens before they even turn a year old. Yikes!!! A cat in heat is not exactly fun to deal with. She wasn't that bad, but it made her restless, and she walked around meowing a lot. I called the vet to ask if they would still do the spaying because we had scheduled this several weeks ago. She said that cats stay in heat so often that even though its not ideal, they just roll with it, so we didn't have to reschedule.

Anyway, she's home now. Those first few hours at home were a little tricky. She was completely disoriented and she kept making this low, gutteral kind of growl, like a cat possessed by the devil. It alarmed me....like a LOT. It was like they gave me the wrong kitten. I didn't know if she was in so much pain that she could barely stand it, or if the whole experience of being left at the vet was so traumatic that she would never get over it. It worried me. But after doing a little research online I found out that cats are very hard to sedate due to a wonky metabolism. One of the anesthetics that vet's use during surgery is basically a hallucinogen and it takes quite a while to wear off. She probably didn't know where she was, or recognize us or anything. In other words, Vixen was having a bad LSD trip. Poor little baby. But tonight she is better. I think that part is wearing off. She knows who we are, and she was just purring when I petted her. We are keeping her in the laundry room for a while, just to keep her still and quiet. She seems to be resting peacefully on her favorite blanket right now, so hopefully in a couple of days, I will have my baby back to normal.