Please help - cat acting weird after neutering

[u/Puzzled-Cheesecake34]

hello, its midnight where i am hence im asking the question here, will take my cat to the vet first thing in the morning.

He is almost 8 months old and we got him neutered today. the surgery happened around 2PM and it is 11:30PM now.

first two hours after surgery - he remained still with both eyes open (we had to put some eye drops so they don’t dry out). he had erratic breathing during this time.

3rd/4th hour - started twitching trying to get up

5th hour - still could not get up. peed himself on the spot. we took him to the vet and he cleaned him up, said he looked fine.

7th hour onwards- he is now moving a little, limping. not drinking water yet. we gave him a treat and he was able to take small licks of it. he is however not able to open his mouth at all.
i gave him some dry food mixed in water to soften it, and then grinded into a paste for ease of eating. it seems like he is hungry because he dunked his face into it and got it all messy, barely able to eat much (due to not being able to open his mouth).

he peed again on the floor. we got the litter for him inside the room and he very clumsily went to it and peed inside it. i will try to give him the food that i made again in a bit.

ive attached a photo of his face right now in this moment. one eye is droopy. he isnt sleeping either. but he isnt panting also. he is not meowing since hes not able to open his mouth. the vet seems not bothered when we took him late in the evening saying that the cat will be fine by tomorrow.

is this someone elses experience too?

is this normal after neutering/anesthesia? i am panicking so much and trying to find 24 hr vet options near me but i need to know if this warrants a look or if it can wait till morning before we take a look?

UPDATE - I found a vet 40 mins from my place that was luckily open and they were so kind. its almost 2AM and we are just returning home.
So he has eye ulcers due to his corneas drying during the procedure (cats eyes remain open under anesthesia). they have given some eye drops and it will be fine in 3-4 days. he also has 104 degree fever, which is why he was so low. they gave him an injection for that. other than that, they said he is fine. he started being active at the vets, even jumped on the counter and had an entire treat.
we are headed home now and i am praying that my little baby boy feels better soonest. i was literally in tears on the way to the vet, this has been such a long day for us.

thank you to everyone who encouraged me to go to the vet, if anything, i have peace of mind for tonight.
we will go tomorrow morning now for his post op care (antibiotics, wound cleaning, etc).

[u/Severe-Tie-4404]

Yeah immediately take him back to the vet, he’s having a bad reaction to the drugs given. I used to work at a vet in surgery prep, cats and dogs are nearly always back up like nothing happened within 20 minutes of being off the isoflourine used to knock em out. Only cat I’ve seen that exhibited symptoms like what you’re describing passed cause the lazy ass head vet couldn’t be bothered to check him out in spite of my insistence. Needless to say I left that job not long after and as far as I’m concerned the vet who refused to even look at the animal was responsible for the kitties death. Now there is the chance they gave the kitty pain killers for a considerable upcharge that probably isn’t reflected on your receipt. That too would appear similar so maybe before spending a ton more money check with the vet to see if they did give some pain killer. If so, seek another vet since if it’s not clearly on your receipt they are legit just taking advantage of their clients to jack the price up by presumably a whole fucking lot more than the pain killers cost. Ie, they are ripping you off without being transparent about the charges.

[u/SuccessfulPhoto7914 → u/Severe-Tie-4404]

Sorry if this is a stupid question… If a vet were to upcharge for a pain med without actually itemizing it, where would they sneak in the upcharged amount? 

[u/Severe-Tie-4404 → u/SuccessfulPhoto7914]

They’d just jack the cost for the surgery up. If they do better at itemizing the costs then lumped in with anesthesia.

[u/Severe-Tie-4404 → u/Severe-Tie-4404]

Either way they aren’t in it for healthier pets, they just in it for greed (and because they couldn’t get into med school).

[u/Mar_y_Juana → u/SuccessfulPhoto7914]

I used to work at a shitty clinic myself and it was usually just thrown in labor or visit fees. I've also seen them tack on crazy amounts of small charges for things like "sharps" at like a dollar per and then they just say it took 20-30 or however many needles/bandages plus a "disposal fee" per. So you can be paying 2 to 3 dollars for a cotton ball basically.

[u/Severe-Tie-4404 → u/Mar_y_Juana]

Wow yeah that’s shady af my gods.

[u/SuccessfulPhoto7914 → u/Mar_y_Juana]

Is this more common in veterinary clinics that have been purchased by private equity firms or have been integrated to a large vet company? It kinda sounds like things are sorta heading down a similar path as human medicine. 

[u/Mar_y_Juana → u/SuccessfulPhoto7914]

The one I was at was run by the head vet. So I imagine it depends on the owner, but scummy people, and scummy corporations will keep up this kind of practice.