I haven’t had time to post lately, but I wanted to give a brief update for those who are following along with Gorgeous’ story, and people who have found this blog because they are considering nosectomy for their cats or have already had it done and need more information.

It’s been almost 3 months since Gorgeous had his nosectomy. Overall, he is doing great! He eats all the time. He’s a bottomless pit, and he weighs a ton, but it’s good weight. He’s not getting fat.

In my last post I talked about issues with getting food up his nose hole. That has improved to the point of being pretty much resolved. I think it was a matter of him perfecting his eating technique. And I think the problem had more to do with the fact that he has no teeth, than the fact that he has no nose.

As far as healing goes, those tissues seem to be toughening up.

Basically, you have the initial healing period after the surgery, and then you have the raw exposed tissue that is completely healed from surgery, but still very sensitive because it is normally protected by the nose as a filter.

The only way I know how to describe it is to tell you to think of it like your throat. The way that you get all sore and stuff if you have a stopped up nose and breathe through your mouth all night.

So, he still gets a bloody nose sometimes, and he still sneezes some, but it’s much much less in just the last week or so. It’s like all those tissues that were protected before, and are exposed to air now, are finally adjusting and toughening up.

He doesn’t have a sneezing fit every time he wakes up now. He did, until very recently. He still has dampness below his nose hole, like he’s got a runny nose, most of the time but not all the time, and not so much as before. The redness and inflammation of tissues in his nose hole are much less. He tends to sneeze when he first tips his head down to eat, but not as consistently as before.

And he looks great! The hair and whiskers they shaved for the surgery have all grown back in. And this is something you need to know, as I mentioned in another post. If you’re like me you were prepared for change in appearance due to, you know, the whole cutting off of the nose thing. But, shaving off the hair and whiskers really accentuated shit a lot. And now that his hair and whiskers are back, he looks like he feels OK again.

That’s a hard part to explain because I wan’t worried about the cosmetics of it, but when his hair and whiskers were gone it looked more uncomfortable. And I suspect that it was more uncomfortable. Hair and whiskers perform real functions, beyond the cosmetic!

So, my advice is, be ready to give it 90 days. Gorgeous was mostly back to normal when his stitches were removed, but he is doing much, much better now.