How will my veterinarian communicate with me after my cat's surgery?

There are some times when I have a full surgical day, I’ll go straight from one procedure to make sure the animal's waking up fine, turn it over to my staff, and I have to jump back in the next surgery. That means that sometimes it will be the veterinary staff that will contact you and explains how your animal did, how they're doing now, and how long before they're awake.

I do lean on my staff quite heavily, but certainly, when possible, I try to make the phone calls myself at least to explain, "Hey, I'm done. This is how it went," because nobody knows how well it went better than me. I was the one doing it. I try to make the phone call whenever possible—either immediately after surgery, or when the client picks up at the time of discharge.

We do a combination, usually, of talking to you whenever you pick up your cat. But, we also try to have everything written down that we’d print out for you because we know that when you're there to pick up your pet, you may be very anxious, and even if you aren't, you may only hear half the things we say. And so, we write those down for you as well.

After your cat has had surgery, there will be aftercare instructions that will go home with you. We will go over those discharge instructions with you in an exam room. Often a pet nurse, especially the one that's usually involved in the care of that cat, will go over those instructions with you, make sure you understand them, and have you sign consent that you received those instructions. We also have an aftercare telehealth app, so-called Anapanion, which you can use to reach out to us with questions after you take your cat home.

We communicate a lot with our clients through text messages and phone calls. We generally don't use email as it's not a fast enough mode of communication.