Kitty ticked off

My poor kitty is very unhappy with me. For many years now, she's had a cyst-like bump on the outside edge of her left ear. More than one vet said to leave it alone if it didn't change, but over the last few months, it started to get a bit bigger, bleed, and feel squishy.

I made arrangements for her to have it removed and biopsied. This was on Saturday. The surgery went well, and Spooky came home groggy and with pain meds. She looked like someone took a melon baller to her ear and scooped out the cyst and surrounding tissue. The vet said the area looked infected.

An entire day went by, then all of Sunday, until Sunday night, when all hades broke loose. Right after I had put haircolor in my hair, and was padding around the house in my bathrobe, Spooky comes wandering into the kitchen with blood dripping off her head like she's a star in a slasher movie. I try to staunch the blood, but to no avail. I phone the on-call vet, who tells me to bring her in to the clinic. I tell him I have a head full of chemicals and that I have to rinse first. I'd be there in 15 minutes.

My daughter helps me pop the kitty into her carrier, I finish becoming a redhead, and off the cat and I go. When I get her out of the carrier, the vet says that it's much worse than he had imagined, and wants to put her back into surgery right then. This time she gets stitches, instead of just the surgical glue from before, and is the proud wearer of an Elizabethan collar.

And that brings me to why my cat is unhappy and ticked off with me. She HATES the collar. She attempts to walk backward out of it, yawls and complains, walks into doors, walls and furniture, and eventually ends up sitting and staring off into space or butted up against a wall, sulking. This will be our existence for the next 10 days, until the stitches are removed. My poor baby. (WARNING: clicking on the picture will show the ear and it's not pretty.)