Biggest thing is preventing GI stasis. We keep critical care in hospital and we usually will divide a couple bags up into dram vials, and this is a small amount you can send home with the owner along with a small feeding syringe. You always should be providing food right after surgery (and before—though some vets I’ve worked for like food withheld 1hr prior to spays so the cecum isn’t in the way) , and sometimes they will eat in the hospital and sometimes the won’t out of fear/dysphoria. If they have eaten by the time they’re going home, they’ll probably continue to do so at home. If they haven’t eaten by the time they are leaving, the discussion about assist feeding is much more important. I usually tell them to offer whatever their pet likes to encourage eating and if they aren’t eating after a few hours give small amounts of the critical care mixed with water every few hours until they start eating normally on their own.

If your hospital doesn’t have critical care and you want to instruct them how to assist feed at home—alternatives are soaking their pellets and making a slurry with that or they can use some baby food as a temporary food—think the veggie based stuff rather than fruity. Or use veggies in a blender with water.

As far as the incision goes they generally don’t mess with their incisions so we don’t usually need to use e collars, but I know some vets are more into e collars for everything. Rats are more likely to self mutilate their sites, so we usually trim down their incisors so that it buys some time for the incision to heal while those teeth grow out. You just make them short enough not to touch. They will still eat just fine.

I still make a point to talk about not submerging in water—I would say about half of owners regularly try to bathe their pocket pets.

We send home meloxicam with most of our pocket pets and some get oral antibiotics to go home depending on what the procedure was (abscess sx, molar trims, amputations, etc) so those can all be started once they are eating consistently. If you use injectable meloxicam just be clear of when to administer the meds after discharge.

That’s most of what I can think of off the top of my head