drain

it seems that our little elly belly got himself in another scrape. when kara and i got home from seattle the other night, on eliot's neck there was a clump of wet fur. kara daubed it with a tissue and the tissue came away red.

the next day, which was the day before yesterday, i took him to the vet. they clipped away the fur and found a hole, about a centimeter in diameter, on the right side of his neck.

i don't know if it was a fresh wound or an old wound that got infected and formed an abscess that burst. (the prime suspect, of course, is yellow [a sociopath by history], though all the evidence is circumstantial.) either way, this is the second major neck wound for our eliot. i knew the drill.

i left him at the vet overnight. i missed him that night, as he usually sleeps on my foot. i missed seeing him around the house during the day the next day. he's a good little boy.

the next day, which was yesterday, he was put under general endotracheal anesthesia, the wound was debrided and sutured, and a drain was left in place.

he seems all right now. he was skittish when we got home but he warmed up to us after a few hours. we're going to keep him inside for at least a few days, which will be a challenge. he's the outdoorsiest of our cats.

the drain is in until monday. the sutures come out in 2 weeks. we are giving him liquid antibiotics and painkillers. (we tried to snap a photo this morning of the drain while we were giving his meds, but he was too wriggly and none of the shots were salvagable. [the photo above is from our voluminous library of eliot snaps - perhaps it looks familiar?] we'll try again.) yeah, he doesn't much enjoy kara forcing the dropper into his mouth.