A Disgusting Story

On Friday afternoon, my younger cat, Paxwell, underwent surgery to remove a lump on her back. She'd had two similar lumps removed last year; the vet thinks they were caused by vaccinations (which Paxwell no longer receives for this reason). We're still not sure about the contents of this particular mass--we'll know more soon, when the test results come back.

Anyway, Paxwell needs to wear a plastic head collar so she doesn't bite open her stitches. We found this out the hard way last year, when she tore open her stitches and required emergency surgery (on my birthday, no less). That was horrible, especially because it was my fault--I should have been watching her more carefully, and never should have trusted her alone without the helmet, no matter what the vet might have said about the wound being mostly healed.

We're still allowing her some time each day without the helmet, so she can eat and groom and relax. We just make sure to watch her every single second that she's uncollared, so that she can't make any fast moves. Which means she wears it most of the time, like when we're sleeping or at work.

Paxwell's a sick cat. She has other medical conditions besides this, and also vomits very frequently, mostly immediately after eating. So I shouldn't have been surprised at what happened last night/this morning.

In the middle of the night, Javert woke up and removed Paxwell from the bed, since she was making the "I'm going to vomit now" sound. I can imitate this quite well--it's a kind of coughing she does while backing up quickly. When she starts making this noise, you have about ten seconds to move her to a vomit-friendly location. I don't know how Javert managed to hear this, wake up, and move Paxwell off the bed, but he did. I half woke up and asked if she'd vomited. Javert said he didn't know as he got out of bed, and I went back to sleep.

This morning we woke up to an apartment filled with cat vomit. Javert had no recollection of Paxwell's or his own nocturnal activities. Paxwell's helmet and neck were crusted over with vomit. She must have thrown up into her hood and then trailed little vomit droplets everywhere as she wandered around the apartment for the next 6 hours. It was everywhere--on three carpets, the floor, the bed, a chair, etc.

The whole incident reminded me of one time when I was sick as a child and felt the urge to throw up in the middle of the night. For some reason, I was scared I'd get in trouble if I called for my mom, so instead I vomited a trail leading into my brother's room. When I got there I was done, and went back to my room to sleep. In the morning, my parents couldn't figure out which of us had done it, or why we'd feel the need to hide being sick. The finally found me out when they saw some crusty vomit on my blanket-sleeper.

So as not to end on that extremely disgusting note, I decided to include a picture of Zolie, who probably feels very left out due to all the fuss we're making over Paxwell. On Sunday night she decided to dress up at the Caped Cat Crusader: (I swear that this was not posed!)