The Cone of Shame
Two weeks ago, Tig broke her metatarsal.
She did it in the fucking dumbest way possible. I actually did a comic earlier this year about the exact scenario that resulted in this injury-- except instead of rolling off her podium, instead she rolled off a shelf that Matt had installed specifically for her at the very top of his office wall. Her landing shook the house! My poor girl.
Honestly, it's kind of been awful. On so many different fronts.
Obviously, it's awful because my beloved creature broke her perfect little foot and she has to be stoned out of her gourd in order to not be in pain. Like, that sucks. Wearing The Cone of Shame gets in the way of doing everything and it just sucks for her.
But then it sucks for Matt and me too because our entire fucking lives have been turned upside down by this. Like, she's just a little cat! It's just a little foot! How much impact could such a little thing possibly have on our human-sized household?
It's disrupted everything.
The night that the fall happened, we had to take her to the emergency vet since it was well after closing hours for our regular clinic. We were there for eleven hours. Literal life-or-death situations kept (understandably!) bumping her priority until sometime in the very early hours of the morning, while it was still pitch black out, one of the clinicians offered to let us sleep on a couch in one of the vacant exam rooms, so we could turn off the lights and have some privacy from the other distressed and/or grieving pet owners in the lobby. The entire experience was pretty surreal.
The three of us emerged from the emergency clinic in the morning. Tig was bandaged, coned, and stoned, while Matt and I were... jet lagged. Like, it felt exactly like when we travel back to visit his family in England and have to spend the next couple days brute-forcing our way through the time zone shift. You're not just sleepy, you're nauseous and the ground feels like it intermittently shifts under your feet. Oh, and your brain just doesn't work, lol. That's how I felt coming out of the hospital and then the next week neither one of us could properly catch up on sleep because one of us always had to watch over our dumbass cat so she wouldn't pull her cast off (which she did succeed in doing once so far). We also had to help her eat and go to her litter box and keep a constant eye on her to gauge from her body language if she needed more painkillers. Matt and I alternated sleeping on the couch for the first week, so she could stay close to all her necessities. I am a regular nap-taker on the couch, so I thought that would be easy-peasy for me, but oh. Oh, ho. My back. My aching back. I am definitely in my 40s now.
She hates her pain meds.
Please don't tell me to put them in a pill pocket or mix them in with this-or-that food stuff. She won't take them. The only way to get them in her is for me to cradle her on her back in my arms, restraining her limbs, while Matt pries open her goblin mouth, launches the buttered-up pill at the back of her throat using an applicator, and then blow gently into her nostril while massaging her throat to coax her into swallowing it down. She hates this, too, but the alternative is to let her spiral into anxiety and pain so... we do it. She shudders in my arms the longer it takes, and it takes longer because she keeps spitting her progressively more mangled pill out even though it absolutely looked like it hit the right spot at the back of her throat. Her eyes plead for us to stop. She shudders. Will she ever forgive me?
So there's the sleep deprivation, there's the anxiety that comes with round-the-clock care taking, and then there's the background mental distress of absolutely trashing our house to accommodate Tig and her healing process. Our dining room table and bench are on their sides to deter her from jumping. Her podiums by the windows are down, too. We've barricaded various doorways with stacks of boxes (which she does try to jump on) to keep her away from other areas of the house. Her cast has no traction on our 100-year-old wood floor, so we laid out yoga mats and blankets so she can walk around without slipping. The couch is a unkempt bed. We took the lid off her litter box so she can use it while coned and no matter how frequently I sweep there is somehow always more kitty litter coating the bathroom floor. Our house legit looks like it was ransacked.
The last couple weeks have been a lot harder on Matt and me than either of us could have anticipated. Mentally, emotionally, physically. The vets estimate it'll take 4-6 weeks to heal. We are starting to get acclimated, starting to get in better sleeps and find our new routine. Today I actually rode my bike to the studio for the first time since the accident! Wow, two weeks housebound and off my bike really takes a toll, man, in more ways than one.
And I love her.
I love my little goblin.
I would do anything to keep her safe, keep her fed, keep her happy. Even force-feed pills down her throat that she hates, because it's good for her in the long run. She's my little Tig, my little girl. She's my ridiculous creature and I would do all of this for her again in a heartbeat.
Heal up fast, Tig!
And quit trying to pull off your cast!!!
Comments (36)
Oh no! Poor Tig! Poor you! Wishing everyone a speedy recovery! It’s sooooo hard to have to do the Good but Awful Things for the fur children when their lil brains cannot comprehend the utility of it all. Hang in there! You’re doing great!
My poor little kitty needs a pill down her throat every day for her kidneys, and at the beginning she HATED it. By now she's accepted her fate and does her best to comply, but the poor little kitty just doesn't understand why we keep doing this every day. I hope Tig finds her peace with the big, hairless, stupid cats who keep disturbing her.
You and Matt are such good cat parents! They never appreciate us, but we love them anyway <3
I'm late as well, but I've experienced the "getting the cat I love so much medded" pain. In order of ease of application for my 4 cats (about to be 5 on Xmas) - injectable, transdermal, liquid oral, pill. I've found my vets will go above and beyond to help get the version that fits their needs and mine best. I hope y'all heal as quickly as possible from the incident and that you receive the support you need to ease the pains and trauma you've experienced.
Poor little tabby cat! Some cats are easy to pill, some aren't. We had to pill Storm recently several times a day, for a week, and my mother was very "this is going to be the most awful thing in the world...." closely followed by "oh. Well, she isn't so bad" because her last cat, Kosmo, would bite the hand that dosed him but Storm feels that doses are terrible unless they are covered in the lick-lick treat-in-a-tube thing, then she happily takes every dose and doesn't argue. I wish Kosmo had been so good about medicine, but he wasn't. He fought like your Tig apparently does. I hope your cat recovers well! It's possible she thinks the cast is causing all the trouble, and doesn't realise it's a healing help not a healing impediment. Not sure how you could get that information across to her though.
Well, two weeks in may be a little late for this to matter a whole lot … but compounding pharmacies and transdermal meds can be a lifesaver, if the med in question is able to be prepared that way! I had to do it with Bruce’s gabapentin when I couldn’t get it into him any other way … this after he injured me pretty badly when I was trying every other possible way. I feel your pain. Hope Tig feels better soon, poor lil thing.
Poor Tig! I hope she heals quickly.
Poor Tig! And poor you and Matt, damn. It takes true dedication to medicate a recalcitrant kitty, cats can be such pill-spitting ninjas sometimes! Fingers crossed for a swift recovery and return to a less-ransacked-looking house.
Poor girl! We also have a cat that we pill with the applicator, so I feel your pain. I hope she and you all are better soon!
Pobrecita. Hope she gets better soon!
God all of the tricks and things to make cats want to take their meds.... You just have to do the pet parent thing, understand they don't understand, and make it happen. And it sucks, it sucks so much!! Your description of the increasingly mangled pill that looks like it should have gone down already, and yet kitty has found a way to gurgle it back up. I FEEL it, viscerally, even though it's been some years since I've had to do that! All my empathy for you guys right now, and hey - you're halfway through, and then sweet silly Tig will be back to her own self, and so will you guys! Thanks for sharing this stuff, always!!!!
I often think if I could have a wish it;d be to be able to help my pets understand that this is to help them heal and get better and please stop spitting the pill out it will *help* I swear. And I'm wholeheartedly with you, it's awful and stressful and miserable and they're worth every second.
Right?? I want her to understand we're not just torturing her for the fun of it! 😭
May the holidays (enjoy them all!) bring you peace and happiness and at least 8 hours of continuous sleep!
Haha thank you 😭❤️
Wishing Tig a speedy recovery. Would she have any interest in a delicious treat just after the pill? My cat absolutely hates getting her nails trimmed but since she's learned her absolute favorite treat happens right after, she's more tolerant and the whole thing is less traumatic for everyone.
Oh yes, she gets treats immediately before and after the pilling ❤️
Awww I totally sympathize! May you heal well, Tig! Many sympathies also from my Pookie (cone of shame in 2025: 4 times)
Four times??? Good LORD! Pookie, get your shit together!
No advice, only sympathies for healing periods causing chaos in your life and crossing my fingers that the rest of the time goes as smoothly as possible 💗
Oh bless her! Our boy Jimmy did the same thing a few years back and he healed up just fine. He sends healing purrs to Tig!
Heal up fast Tig!
She says thank you!
I've been there with a variety of critters and I just wanna tell you, you rock! Both of you. It takes a very special, strong kind of person to be willing and able to accommodate their fuzzy friends in this way. and yeah, Tig, don't take that thing off.
🥹❤️
Our white cat, Portia, was hyperthyroid. The first-line treatment is a lifetime of some medication that basically gives the cat mange, and she *hated* it. The gold-standard is ... radioactive iodine treatment (which they also do for people). You end up with a dangerously radioactive kitty that produces dangerously radioactive piss and shit. Like you shouldn't pet the cat for more than few seconds, and you absolutely don't want it curling up on your lap or sleeping next to you. I borrowed a geiger counter from a cow-orker, and the thing _squealed_ and pegged the meter when it got within a few feet of the cat. I built a 10'x5' enclosure on the back porch for her to live in for the 10 days it took for the radiation to get down to something that wouldn't give us cancer. She was ... not excited about it at all. At least it was good weather. And honestly all of that seems _less_disruptive than what y'all are going through. My sincere condolences. Injured pets are sooo hard to deal with.
Holy shit! I think RADIOACTIVE CAT trumps broken-paw cat ANY day!
My cat has a rare illness (feline hyperesthesia) and at this point in her life we have it much more managed but she's lived through long stretches as a cone baby to keep from overgrooming and it suuuucks, you've got my sympathy. At a point she started to get feline acne from the plastic so we did a mix of a fabric cone and baby clothes!! Cute but still terrible! Also she's bigger than whatever the typical baby size is that they recommend for cats, my literal big baby 🤣
Cone of shame is the common descriptor but I prefer to think of it as the cone of courage. 😊
I love that.
Oh gosh that sounds terrible. Medicating a resistant cat is the worst. I had to give one a twice daily inhaler treatment for a while. 😿
Oh my gosh, I can't even imagine how you'd give an inhaler to a cat??
You need a litter mat for the litter. It contains it. The cheapest ones just kind of never let it go, and you replace them every so often, while more expensive ones let you dump the litter back into the box.
Also did you talk to your vet about the pill issue? When one of my semi-ferals broke his leg in....22? 23? They gave me a liquid painkiller for him. (the hearing period transitioned him from semi-feral to fully indoor, too!)
best wishes for kitty's speedy recovery
Thank you ❤️