Finally, yesterday was the day when Ripley had to go to the vet's to have her tail stitches removed. In generally she has being a really good 'patient'. Ripley always has been the best cat when it comes to not causing any problems, she will eat anything you giver her, wet food or biscuits, she is quite happy to sleep on the sofa, bed, chair, etc wherever there is a space available without causing any fuss (except from her recently preference for the sofa upstairs, my seat, but this is a different subject for a different day), she will play on her own when she feels like and she will appreciate any kind of attention she is given, when it is given and of course she has never caused any kind of problem in the few occasions when she had to have stitches (when she was spayed and the very recent accident with her tail) which made the collar she was wearing a waste of time and caused a lot of unnecessary stress. During the period of two weeks that she had the stitches she didn't try even once to pull them off and she was only licking the area around the wound (although the first time I saw her licking around the stitches I panicked as my first thought was that she was trying to remove the stitches, but of course that wasn't really the case...). So I was pretty confident that her tail was healing perfectly and I was also pleased that the fur had started growing again and soon the tail would look like a proper one again, minus a couple of inches or according to the vet, minus one and a half inches. But nevertheless I was still worrying and was looking forward to the removal of the stitches day as I wanted to be reassured by the vet that everything was fine with her...On the other hand the stitches were really small and they looked so tempting to just try and remove them with a small pair of scissors on my own than having to put Ripley through the entire stressful situation of catching her and putting her into a basket and walk to the vets' to have the professional do it .... But I know better and I want the best possible care for my cat that I went of course for the best solution possible, well at least I thought I was, anyway. It has always being my strong belief through personal and working experience that stress can play a great factor in the wellbeing of a pet not only the psychological one but also the physiological one too and unfortunately in many cases far too often vets do not pay the required attention to the pet's level of stress or they see it as important as they should do which can lead to dire results. If the cat/pet is stressed will be less likely to recover quickly from any kind of illness and in some cases it can even contribute to make the situation worse or even cause an unexpected death. Therefore it is important to make certain that stress levels are always being taken into consideration along with any illness symptoms and every effort is made to relive that stress and comfort the cat to help with a speedy recovery.
So having to catch Ripley and put her into the basket was again a very stressful situation not only for her but for us as well and for Sheng Chi who is more attached to Ripley than Choo Choo and everything that seems to stress her upsets Sheng Chi too.
But at least this time the journey was only a couple of minutes just down the road and the whole 'operation' lasted a couple of minutes in which time the vet checked the condition of the now almost closed tail wound, which was doing fine and Ripley was fine when she arrived at the vets'. A behaviour that is quite common for many for many normally timid cats who seem to get in a panicking mode when they are first put in their basket and sometimes during the journey to the vet but the moment they arrive there and the vet takes them out of the basket they become the friendliest creatures ever and they allow the vet not only to handle them like they knew him/her for years but also they will go back into their basket with no problems whatsoever! Ripley has always being a timid cat who doesn't like strangers, people she doesn't know but she seemed OK with both vets that they examined her, she wasn't scared or made any kind of sound to show fear or any form of being scared, not even a bit...
But the good thing was that at least the stitches were finally off, her tail is healing fine and the fur has started growing again and the end of the shaved tail looks again like a cat's tail and she was safe and sound back home. All in all it took less than 15 minutes from the moment she was put into the basket till the moment she was out again looking for her bowl with biscuits... Although she has lost a little bit of her tail she is just fine and doesn't seem to care about the missing bit at all, happy to be in her familiar environment again, crunching away her favourite biscuits...
So having to catch Ripley and put her into the basket was again a very stressful situation not only for her but for us as well and for Sheng Chi who is more attached to Ripley than Choo Choo and everything that seems to stress her upsets Sheng Chi too.
But at least this time the journey was only a couple of minutes just down the road and the whole 'operation' lasted a couple of minutes in which time the vet checked the condition of the now almost closed tail wound, which was doing fine and Ripley was fine when she arrived at the vets'. A behaviour that is quite common for many for many normally timid cats who seem to get in a panicking mode when they are first put in their basket and sometimes during the journey to the vet but the moment they arrive there and the vet takes them out of the basket they become the friendliest creatures ever and they allow the vet not only to handle them like they knew him/her for years but also they will go back into their basket with no problems whatsoever! Ripley has always being a timid cat who doesn't like strangers, people she doesn't know but she seemed OK with both vets that they examined her, she wasn't scared or made any kind of sound to show fear or any form of being scared, not even a bit...
But the good thing was that at least the stitches were finally off, her tail is healing fine and the fur has started growing again and the end of the shaved tail looks again like a cat's tail and she was safe and sound back home. All in all it took less than 15 minutes from the moment she was put into the basket till the moment she was out again looking for her bowl with biscuits... Although she has lost a little bit of her tail she is just fine and doesn't seem to care about the missing bit at all, happy to be in her familiar environment again, crunching away her favourite biscuits...
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