not enough shame

Our post-operative cat is sporting a Cone of Shame, to prevent him from gnawing on his Fentanyl patch.  My children adore a friend's cat who often is put into a Cone of Shame due to a persistent skin condition which the cat grooms to a state of bleeding.  They were so taken by that cone that they dubbed the cat "Coney" and our friend's other cat "Notconey" and, when the cone is off, call Coney "Coney-Now-Unconed."  I thought they'd be excited to have their very own Coney.  "My little Coney, friendship is magic," crooned Iris as she carried our own cone-owning cat's carrier.

Inside the house the cat, who had been silent and motionless since we acquired him at the vet, began thrashing violently to the point where it was difficult to hold the carrier.  We had planned to sequester the convalescent in the master bedroom, with his own private litter box and food and catbed, and the box jittered and crashed about as Iris carried it upstairs.  The entire box was shaking and at risk of falling of the bed, while we were trying to figure out how to adjust the cone to put it on him.  "We'd better let him out," I said.  "We'll keep an eye on him while we figure out the cone."  I opened the carrier, and the thrashing animal slid out... upside down.  Clearly he'd lost track of which side was up in his struggles.  His eyes were hugely dilated, and the only thing on his mind was escaping from the bedroom.  But neither Iris nor I could figure out how to adjust the cone (not as easy a cone to attach to a cat's head as Coney's, which we had put on our friend's cat before).  We called to the Sober Husband, our resident mechanical genius.  "Come quickly!" shouted Iris.

I held the violent convalescent with difficulty while the Sober Husband attached the cone.  The cat was off, weaving around.  "We may as well let him out of the room," I said, bowing to reality.  He made his uneven way downstairs and immediately gorged on dry food, although we had been instructed to feed him only canned food.  Iris opened cans and showed him the canned food, but he kept gnawing at the dried.  We put away the dried food and left him with canned food, which he smeared his cone in and then abandoned.

His next order of business was to piss on our shoes in the hallway.  The operation he'd endured had come about as a result of his peeing on the shoes:  I wanted to see if there was an underlying physical cause for this annoying change of behavior.  We'd just paid over two thousand dollars in hopes of getting the cat to a point where he wouldn't pee on the shoes.  I cleaned up the piss and the shoes, and we removed all shoes from the scene.  Later the cat pissed where the shoes had been (only a short distance from a lovely, clean litterbox).

The cat has been trying to get out of the house, howling, peeing on the shoes and floor,  knocking things over, and generally acting the fool.  I would like to appropriate his Fentanyl patch, thinking that I myself would wear it with more dignity.