It's been an interesting day, so far, full of surprises. We're hoping that the rest of the day will be a predictable bore. Interesting, I should add, like what one might expect of that old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times". We had an interesting time this morning.

It all began when we made a joint decision. The instructions handed to us when we left the Ogdensburg Veterinary Hospital informed us that for Jillie, having undergone spay surgery, we should wait between five and seven days before removing that dreadful plastic Elizabethan collar. We'd thought about alternate types of collars, inflatable ones that rest around the neck, but what we've read about them, and been told, even from those who sell them, is that they're fairly ineffectual. And for Jackie the time frame was reduced for neutering removal of the cones to between three and five days.

We could see their wounds were healing wonderfully well. We had our doubts about Jillie because her surgery was the more difficult of the two, but we thought it was time to remove the cones, mostly because Jackie was inordinately miserable wearing his. Oddly enough, while he's in the house he treats the cone casually, as though it's not even there. Once he's outside, though, it's a different story; he keeps trying every acrobatic gyration he can manage to remove it.

It was Jackie who had recovered quickest from surgery, and even a few hours post-surgery was energetic, aware and seemingly unperturbed. We had alternates to the cones after all; the use of infant onesies, that we had used previously with our little guys who predated these two, and they had worked wonderfully well, covering the wounds so that access to them was denied.

So off came Jack's and Jill's cones this morning. I think we were more relieved than they were. Jillie behaved as though there had been nothing whatever amiss and just went about her business, in her little onesie, and never bothered to attempt licking herself. Jackie, on the other hand, Mr. Casual, went kind of berserk and just couldn't lick himself enough, suddenly released from the constraints of the collar.

Before we knew it he had opened the wound. A smidgen of an opening, but a break nonetheless. Our regular veterinary clinic remains open half-day Sunday so off we went with him. They were adamant that he would have to be re-stitched and likely placed under anaesthetic; of course by then they'd already had their breakfast. Because they weren't set up for surgery on Sundays they advised us to take him right over to the emergency veterinary hospital we'd used previously, so we did just that.

There, the veterinarian said she'd try giving him a local anaesthetic and if he allowed her to stitch him under a local he wouldn't need to be put under. It would take a few minutes, she said, and then we'd know whether he would have to be left for hours or could be taken right home. When she returned with him she said his surgical wound had healed very nicely; only the surface portion of it had been disturbed. And he had behaved to allow her to stitch it together. To say we were grateful is an understatement.

And off we went home with the two little rascals in tow. Jack, once again wearing his cone, which he'll now have to continue wearing for at least another week while his wound continues to heal, and Jill, in her little onesie, disinterested in causing herself the same kind of grief that her brother had indulged in.

It's about a half-hour drive from the emergency hospital to home, and how odd, we said it was, to see two police cars parked not far from our house. I had a fleeting thought swiftly dismissed that they may have responded to someone's house alarm; ours. When we entered the house there was a telephone message from our alarm company. Yup, ours had unaccountably tripped; likely when we exited the house to drive to the veterinarian hospital we hadn't closed the back door tightly enough, causing the alarm to become alarmed.

Certainly a most interesting series of incidents; and more than enough, we feel, for one day.