post-spay

I've been dealing with rescued felines for years - most of my life, actually - and as I firmly believe that all pets should be spayed/neutered, Charlie is hardly the first cat I've had spayed. While no surgery is without risk, I've always had complete confidence in my vets in the US, and have never worried about sending them off to be fixed. However, while living in Central Asia, I had a cat almost die from shock following her surgery. Additionally, I'd heard a couple of horror stories about people here in Korea who had their pets die under the knife. (Cats aren't commonly kept as pets here, and spaying/neutering of pets isn't all that common.) I like my Korean vet a lot, but nonetheless, I was pretty worried about Charlie.

I'm happy to say that her recovery is going well. Initially, her ordeal set her back on the feral meter a good bit. (For those of you who don't know Charlie's history, I found her as a feral kitten, and after dragging her kicking, screaming, and biting into my house, she then hid from me for a good two months before slowly becoming a lovable, snuggly cat.) After bringing her home from surgery, I had to go to work. I spent the entire day fretting about her... When I came home, she was hiding under the bed, and she hissed and spat at me at first when I tried to coax her out, something which she hadn't done since her days as a feral kitten. However, as I wrote on Tuesday, she did slink out and sit at my feet.

Tuesday and Wednesday she was obviously still in pain. Walking seemed to be painful to her, and she wasn't able to jump up onto the bed and had to be lifted. She also didn't have much of an appetite. However, by Thursday she seemed to perk up a good bit, and got back into snuggling and purring. As of today, she has fallen back into her normal habit of following me around the house, purring, and commenting with her squeaky little 'meh-meh' voice, and her appetite is most definitely back to normal.

Charlie, snuggling in my lap