- Joined
- Apr 30, 2019
I can answer this with some authority. Without PLing too hard, let's say I am in animal welfare.New community post - 25/11/2024
So she can't go live tonight, lol of course she can't. The picture is of course a zoomed-in one so you can't see much, I don't know about this. I've never owned a cat so I'm clueless and the dog I own already, came spayed. Should the cat have some cone or something to stop it from licking/biting the wound/stitches? And I always thought (from my friend's cats) that they recover quickly. like within hours?
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Female sterilization is a bit more difficult than male, with the males they just do little slits on the sack and yeet their nuts out. Most boys are fine within hours, especially kitten boys though you do have to try to keep them on low activity for healing. For females I've seen everything from huge gashes to modest cuts and neat stitches. It depends a lot on the clinic, when we're running 30 feral cats through the "industrial" spay/neuter center it's usually less artistic than the ones that get done for a few hundred bucks by the vet's office. It also depends on the animal's anatomy. So TLDR, recovery varies. As a general rule, spays are tougher than neuters.
Cones are never mandatory in my experience, only if you observe her messing with the wound. Pain meds aren't routine either, I won't sperge about how little consideration is given to cats' pain levels since they're so good at hiding it.
All post-surgical females will have noticeably shaven stomachs, this will be particularly noticeable on a furball like Julia. So that's our tell.
Some females recover quickly, especially young healthy girls, but it sometimes takes around 48 hours before she's feeling somewhat normal again, assuming everything went as expected and she doesn't have a reaction to the anesthesia. It can take longer. It's a significant surgery. A routine one, to be sure. But significant on the cat.
I hope Julia at least has a clean blanket to rest on and that they didn't take her to some back alley chop shop vet slash nail tech slash barber. If this story is true at all.