shadesofmauve | Monkey Health Update

I’m exhausted. I suppose it’s rather like having a kid that’s sick, only instead of having to wake up during the night to help them, they get up to help themselves and then run into things because they have a cone on their head. Loudly.

Which isn’t very like it all, but still doesn’t equal ‘lots of excellent sleep.’

Monkey only seems to feel comfortable when he’s really close to me, so after every night-time foray to the litterbox or wherever he’d come back, get close to my head, and rest his chin on me. By which I mean ‘rest his cone on on my face.’

He was an absolute dear while I cleaned the drain sites. I gave him his kitty narcotics about half an hour before, timed to get him blissed. I'm expecting an award for ‘cleanest cat drain site’ when we go to get it removed, because all the times I had to clean my own pin sites came back. Sterile procedure for puncture wounds with foreign objects inserted, that you wish to remain open? Yes, sir, we can do that.

(It was actually really weird -- it was kind of relaxing, in that "Hey, this is something I am super competent at" way. Not that it's super hard or anything, but despite over a decade since the last time I had to do it, swabbing gunk away from an insertion site was comfortingly familiar. That's bizarre.)

Was able to get him all cleaned up, and encourage a little more pus to drain, in the process. And he was a very good boy through it.

He still can’t seem to figure out the cone, so even things that he physically should be able to manage — drinking from the big bowl, eating — he finds frustrating and gives up. I’ve been taking the cone off to let him eat and drink, under very close supervision (as soon as he moves away from the bowl he lifts his paws to scratch, and back on it goes).

Oh, and since he’s deprived of his normal relaxation behavior — licking his own belly until he’s nearly bald — he’s started self-soothing by grooming his cone.