Adventures in the Cone of Shame

So last Saturday my cat got hurt. We don't really know how or by what (we think it was another cat), but it's a pretty significant wound. She has something like 14 or 16 stitches. 









Wanna see a close up of that? 

















YUM. 

My cat is probably about 45/55 outside cat, so she's in the yard and adjacent yards fairly often. And she is very territorial- I guess most cats probably are. She gets in fights frequently, but she usually doesn't get too affected by them. She'll have a limp for a couple days or a scratch somewhere but it lasts for 2-3 days at the very most. Well on Sunday she came inside and she was limping a little. We didn't think much of it, but then she started acting super paranoid and wouldn't stay still. She kept licking her tail so I knew she was hurt. My mom looked at her about half an hour later (I don't like to touch her when she's hurt). She moved a chunk of her fur and there was a big 2 inch gash in her would-be-hip area, just above her tail. It was really.. Gross. And bloody. And gross. 

So anyway, she was extremely paranoid and was totally watching her back like crazy. Eventually she hid under a couch and stayed there for hours hurting. 
Anyway, we ended up taking her to the vet to get stitched up on Monday. They kept her over night, so on Tuesday afternoon when I came home from school she was there, on the couch, being pitiful. They shaved a bit of her fur off of course, and we decided she would look extremely strange as a bald cat, given how crazy fluffy she is. 
So she has a cone on her head. 

She looks ridiculous. And it's really quite sad and pathetic. She has to wear it for two weeks and she can't go outside, so she's going a little crazy. The first couple days she was content to just sleep and sleep and sleep, but now she's like "LET ME OUTSIDE, HUMANS." Yesterday the front door was left open several inches and she laid on the floor rather dramatic-like just staring out the screen. 

On the first night she was home she tried to eat. With her cone. I honestly feel really bad for her, but it was hilarious. She kept trying to get her head in there to eat but the cone was pushing the bowl farther and farther away from her face. Now that it's been a few days she's sort of got the hang of it. 
Also that night she tried to get a drink of water and tipped over the whole big bowl, water cascading all over the carpet. 
Today she managed to take the cone off for a time. We don't know how long exactly, but she had already made her stitches bleed so we had to put it back on her. She then sat in the middle of the hallway, glaring at anybody who looked her way. 
By Saturday morning, Duchess was obviously very, very bored. She had mostly gotten used to the cone, except that it itches and she doesn't like that. She welcomes any and all neck scratching by us wholeheartedly. But she is so unbelievably bored. She wants to go outside so badly, but she can't for another week. So on Saturday morning she walked around the house meowing every five seconds at us. Not just a regular meow. No, not at all. It is not by any means cute or precious. It's annoying and loud and kinda sounds like she's dying. She loves to complain. So she did that for a couple hours on Saturday morning, but we were gone the majority of Saturday. When we came home she'd moved on from that horrible complain and decided to start running maniacally all over the house instead. This lasted awhile. Unfortunately, as soon as she was tired of that, she moved back to her obnoxious complaining. 

And this is her, being bored, climbing sideways against the wall. 

Today we took of the cone for a few hours because she was being so annoying, but mostly I think she wants to go outside. But she's still got a week left till everything will be healed right. Pray I have the patience not to kick her, even though I would never do that.