Is there anything more pitiful than animals with cones on their heads?

George and Jayne went in to get fixed on Monday. They don't seem too mad at us, though I'm wondering how they're going to react next time we try to take them to the vet.

When we got them home, we had to put cones on their heads. They did not like that very much. It might have been funny if it wasn't so sad; they were freaking out and trying to back away from the cones which were, of course, following them. They tried to hide under things to get away and bonked the cones. Plus they couldn't figure out how to eat or drink, and they hadn't had food for about 24 hours or water for about 12, so they were really trying.

After five minutes of watching them freaking out, I phoned the vet to see how long we'd have to leave the cones on. I think I must've accidentally said "spayed" instead of "neutered" though because I was wondering about the boys' sisters who just got spayed and didn't have cones when we saw them at my in-laws on the weekend. The girl on the phone told me two weeks. TWO WEEKS. At that point, I didn't think I could deal with two hours of the freaking out.

Luckily, they calmed down and learned how to eat, drink, and not run into things fairly quickly. But I still couldn't deal with how sad they looked and took their cones off already. It's not like they even have stitches to chew, so we're choosing the "keep an eye on them" method over the "torture the poor babies" method of protecting their incisions.