Our kitten Maia had hernia surgery last week, and so for a couple of weeks we need to make sure she doesn't hurt herself by licking or scratching her abdomen. I thought I'd share a few of our experiences - food for thought for other pet owners who may sometimes find themselves in this situation.
The traditional approach is an e-collar. What we've found is that e-collars are really quite horrible: They make being a cat (or, as applicable, dog) totally impossible. While they're a necessary evil in many cases, I think alternatives are a good thing.
In this particular case, we really needed an alternative. FWIW, Maia seems to have no neck to speak of. So even with the collar woven through the edge of the e-collar, she had no problem getting it off within 10 minutes.
We considered two commercial alternatives and one homemade alternative.
The first commercial alternative was recommended by our vet - a bite collar. This is like a neck brace, with hard (but bendable) plastic inside. It wraps around the neck area, and secures with a strap, and prevents the cat from bending their neck. This effectively precludes bending around to lick the abdomen. It has no significant adverse impact on the cat's ability to eat or drink (unless you leave a little food/water at the bottom of a narrow, deep bowl - then it might be a little bit of a challenge). It also has no appreciable adverse impact on using the litter box. Indeed, one of the downsides of this approach is that, unlike the e-collar, which by its very nature limits a cat's activity, the bite collar, once the cat gets used to it, becomes a very minor impediment to activity, and post-surgery, you often do need to keep the cat from being active, so as to not pull out the stitches. However, there are other ways to accomplish this, i.e., keeping the cat away from playmates, and restricting to a smaller area, when unsupervised.
The bite-collar approach did work for us, and quite well, and I think unless our cat turns into Houdini, will be the solution-supreme from now on.
We also considered the inflatable protective collars. My wife was a big fan of this approach, but it didn't seem like it would do as good of a job as the bite-collar keeping a cat from bending over and around it to lick at the affected area. It also had no secondary means of securing it to the cat; like an e-collar, it just connects to a collar, and again, some cats can easily get out of a collar like that.
It does look like these inflatable protective collars will work for wounds that are on the shoulders or just under the neck.
After a couple of days, though, we were wondering if it was necessary to have the annoyance of even the bite-collar inflicted on Maia. In addition, we were concerned about keeping her warm enough (given that the vet's instructions made a point of that, and that we've had frosty nights around here this past week, and of course Maia's abdomen was completely shaved for the surgery, so she's lost her fur coat). My wife dug out some leg warmers that she had since the 1970s, and put the cat in one. It works great, both to deflect the cat away from licking or scratching the abdomen, and also to keep the cat warm. While the vet had heard of people using infant onesies, he had never heard of anyone using leg warmers, but given the need to keep the cat warm, he felt it was an even better approach.
I think, though, that if we had a cat that had more of an OCD nature (and we've had a couple of cats that would fall into that category), the sweater-like woven nature of the leg warmers wouldn't be much of a deterrent. I suppose a more fabric-like nature would probably serve the purpose better, though I'm not sure leg warmers, either back in the 1970s or now, come that way.
The traditional approach is an e-collar. What we've found is that e-collars are really quite horrible: They make being a cat (or, as applicable, dog) totally impossible. While they're a necessary evil in many cases, I think alternatives are a good thing.
In this particular case, we really needed an alternative. FWIW, Maia seems to have no neck to speak of. So even with the collar woven through the edge of the e-collar, she had no problem getting it off within 10 minutes.
We considered two commercial alternatives and one homemade alternative.
The first commercial alternative was recommended by our vet - a bite collar. This is like a neck brace, with hard (but bendable) plastic inside. It wraps around the neck area, and secures with a strap, and prevents the cat from bending their neck. This effectively precludes bending around to lick the abdomen. It has no significant adverse impact on the cat's ability to eat or drink (unless you leave a little food/water at the bottom of a narrow, deep bowl - then it might be a little bit of a challenge). It also has no appreciable adverse impact on using the litter box. Indeed, one of the downsides of this approach is that, unlike the e-collar, which by its very nature limits a cat's activity, the bite collar, once the cat gets used to it, becomes a very minor impediment to activity, and post-surgery, you often do need to keep the cat from being active, so as to not pull out the stitches. However, there are other ways to accomplish this, i.e., keeping the cat away from playmates, and restricting to a smaller area, when unsupervised.
The bite-collar approach did work for us, and quite well, and I think unless our cat turns into Houdini, will be the solution-supreme from now on.
We also considered the inflatable protective collars. My wife was a big fan of this approach, but it didn't seem like it would do as good of a job as the bite-collar keeping a cat from bending over and around it to lick at the affected area. It also had no secondary means of securing it to the cat; like an e-collar, it just connects to a collar, and again, some cats can easily get out of a collar like that.
It does look like these inflatable protective collars will work for wounds that are on the shoulders or just under the neck.
After a couple of days, though, we were wondering if it was necessary to have the annoyance of even the bite-collar inflicted on Maia. In addition, we were concerned about keeping her warm enough (given that the vet's instructions made a point of that, and that we've had frosty nights around here this past week, and of course Maia's abdomen was completely shaved for the surgery, so she's lost her fur coat). My wife dug out some leg warmers that she had since the 1970s, and put the cat in one. It works great, both to deflect the cat away from licking or scratching the abdomen, and also to keep the cat warm. While the vet had heard of people using infant onesies, he had never heard of anyone using leg warmers, but given the need to keep the cat warm, he felt it was an even better approach.
I think, though, that if we had a cat that had more of an OCD nature (and we've had a couple of cats that would fall into that category), the sweater-like woven nature of the leg warmers wouldn't be much of a deterrent. I suppose a more fabric-like nature would probably serve the purpose better, though I'm not sure leg warmers, either back in the 1970s or now, come that way.
All I have now are some webcam shots of her sleeping in the thing.
