Congratulations on pulling Crybaby through this very serious problem, she really owes her life to you. I almost couldn't believe what the first vet told you, not only about not considering hepatic lipidosis to be a possibility when it would be the first thing most vets would consider, but also about putting in a tube when a cat is terminally ill. What a lousy thing to do to a cat in their last weeks of life, pushing them to live a tiny bit longer when their body is telling them it's time to leave. The only experience I could compare it to was when a substitute vet told me that my recently rescued cat Be^te had a brain tumor because he was circling and tilting his head. In fact, he had ear mites!

You obviously change the dressing yourself since you mentioned removing it so you could give the area a good scratch - boy do they love that when they have a bandage on most of the time, drooling and purring madly while you scrath. My Diego has had a tube in (well, several tubes, one after the other) for about 18 months now so I can give him pain medication for nerve pain in his mouth. He's a big, strong boy and beats the heck out of the bandage so I've gradually developed my best way to protect the tube insertion site. I wrap the gamgee twice around the tube site, cutting a hole just large enough for the tube to go through on the first wrap and then cutting into the gamgee so it wraps either side of the tube on the second. I then use cloth tape across the gamgee all across where he is most likely to scratch close to the tube. I think this helps stop his claws going through both the vetwrap and the gamgee then right to the stitches. The vet wrap also has holes cut into it so I can slip the tube through and it's wrapped so the third short wrap is around the tube site.

Anyway, it sounds like you will both be free of the tube in a few days. Let us know how she enjoys her freedom and renewed health.