This time, they actually let me spring him as promised. I don’t know who’s happier, me or him.

He’s doing fairly okay – I have to keep a close eye on him to make sure he’s not trying to lick his stitches or chew off his fentanyl patch (being held on by the blue bandage on his foot), but for the most part he just wants to sit, be stoned, and snuggle.

He does find time to hate his new haircut, which took odd looking patches off of all four of his legs, plus all his belly fur. He looks like some demented person tried to shave him like a poodle and was stopped just before they got to his tail.

But really, he’s being super sweet and cuddly, and really happy to be out of the hospital. Unless, of course, I try to medicate him. This was him after my first round of chasing him down to dope him up:

Anyway, very, very happy to finally have him home and have him apparently be on the mend. Couple more pictures over at my Flickr.

Edited to add: Oh, and his collar’s off because I’m here keeping a close eye on him. He still has to wear the satellite dish when I’m asleep or at work for the next couple weeks, but at least as long as I can keep watch on him he’s free of that misery.

My current Crackberry doesn’t have a camera, and there are definitely times like tonight where I wish it had one.

I went to visit Chaplin in the animal hospital (hopefully I can take him home tomorrow but they want to keep him under observation for another night) and they had finally taken out the tube that had been running into his bladder for the last couple weeks.

They had repeatedly tried to bandage him up to protect the area of his stomach the tube had been coming out of, but he’d kept kicking the bandages off…except for this last one they put on him.

It’s a big neon green bandage wrapped around his midsection, complete with a powder blue bandage that someone cut out in the shape of a “C” and stuck on his back. Apparently the second that one went on, he decided that the bandage was okay.

I was describing this look, along with his ridiculous satellite dish collar, to Joel and he immediately replied, “So he looks like a superhero lamp.”

A superhero lamp with a very goofy haircut, but yes. Superhero lamp.

If they leave the bandage on when I go to get him tomorrow, I’ll try to get some pictures.

Chaplin did wind up needing more surgery, unfortunately. The good news is that it was the less severe surgery (ACHTUNG!: Guys should think twice about whether they really want to click that link), which has a much lower rate of complications.

Hopefully I’ll have him back on Sunday. This entire experience has been incredibly emotionally draining for me, and obviously pretty physically draining for poor Chaplin. He’s now down to 16 pounds, and looks even skinnier because they had to shave off all his belly fur for the first surgery.

Anyway, thanks to those of you who have been keeping your fingers crossed for him, I really appreciate it. Hopefully he’ll get better quickly and I can go back to writing about how goofy LA is instead of the horrifying blog cliché of health updates about my cat.