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My little girl had surgery last week (abdominal obstruction, she ate an ace bandage), and I've been having to keep her from licking at and biting a pretty large incision on her belly.
They sent her home wearing one of those hard plastic e-collars, but she was really miserable in it and yowled nonstop for 2 days. I tried one of the softer, floppy e-collars, but it didn't offer enough protection. I also tried one of the inflatable ones (looks a bit like the U-shaped pillows you can use on an airplane) but somehow, she kept managing to pull it off.
I finally hit upon a great solution, and wanted to pass it along to other cat-parents.
I found a sleeveless baby sundress at Target. It's kind of a spaghetti strap style, so the arm holes were pretty generously sized. I enlarged the neck opening slightly, and did some quick measuring/estimating when the cat was asleep to figure out where to place holes for the back paws. Once the sundress was over her head, with her front paws thru the arm holes and her back paws through the holes i'd cut, I tied a knot in the back of the skirt to take up the slack with the excess fabric. It's working beautifully - she can't reach her incision, yet her paws are all free. She got used to wearing it after about an hour. The fabric is loose enough over her belly that it isn't rubbing, and it breathes. There's also enough room in the bum for going potty (I had to trim the length a bit). And she can eat/drink much more easily in this than she could in the e-collar.
My little girl is much more comfortable in this than she'd have been in the hard e-collar for a week. She's about 7 pounds and pretty petite, so a 3 month size was about right. (I think you could make something similar if you cut up a pair of leggings.)
Good idea Wry_Martini...I had to put a collar on one of my cats one time (she'd been stitched up after surviving a dog attack), and I actually thought it might make her go literally insane before she ever healed up...What I did was take it off her for a few hours a day, and keep an eye on her, making sure she just cleaned and licked anywhere but the stitches..She hated that collar and was very unhappy when I'd put it back on. I had to though....she finally healed and survived the plastic collar with most of her senses intact.
My friend has to keep his cat in something very similar to this. He gets sores on his skin that he always messes with and they can't heal so that is what they did as well. Works like a charm!
My little girl had surgery last week (abdominal obstruction, she ate an ace bandage), and I've been having to keep her from licking at and biting a pretty large incision on her belly.
They sent her home wearing one of those hard plastic e-collars, but she was really miserable in it and yowled nonstop for 2 days. I tried one of the softer, floppy e-collars, but it didn't offer enough protection. I also tried one of the inflatable ones (looks a bit like the U-shaped pillows you can use on an airplane) but somehow, she kept managing to pull it off.
I finally hit upon a great solution, and wanted to pass it along to other cat-parents.
I found a sleeveless baby sundress at Target. It's kind of a spaghetti strap style, so the arm holes were pretty generously sized. I enlarged the neck opening slightly, and did some quick measuring/estimating when the cat was asleep to figure out where to place holes for the back paws. Once the sundress was over her head, with her front paws thru the arm holes and her back paws through the holes i'd cut, I tied a knot in the back of the skirt to take up the slack with the excess fabric. It's working beautifully - she can't reach her incision, yet her paws are all free. She got used to wearing it after about an hour. The fabric is loose enough over her belly that it isn't rubbing, and it breathes. There's also enough room in the bum for going potty (I had to trim the length a bit). And she can eat/drink much more easily in this than she could in the e-collar.
My little girl is much more comfortable in this than she'd have been in the hard e-collar for a week. She's about 7 pounds and pretty petite, so a 3 month size was about right. (I think you could make something similar if you cut up a pair of leggings.)
Every so often a really good idea/solution to a problem comes along that's borderline genius. I think this may be one of those. Fortunately I've not yet had to use that collar for any of mine, but would certainly rather use what you came up with. You should consider making these for sale... seriously.
I would think the market for it would be substantial, and maybe even make that awful collar obsolete.
How ingenious of you! That sounds even better than the solution we had when Sadie got spayed and was wriggling out of her e-collar: a baby onesie, with a hole cut out for the tail. Here's a pic I posted on my blog: It's all about the cats!: What does a kitten in a onesie look like?
She gets her stitches out tomorrow, so I'll post a pic tomorrow night. (It might be helpful to show you what it looks like, when she's not wearing it, in case any of y'all ever need to duplicate this idea.)
She adapted to the little romper/outfit really well. I think she's pretty much forgotten she's wearing it - and my mom pointed out that it's also helping keep her poor shaved belly nice and warm.
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