Seems odd that your vet provided a cone of shame for this particular surgery since modern laparoscopic techniques make spay and neuter incisions so small they don't need protection from licking.
As a hobby I do volunteer TNR (trap-neuter-return) work to get outdoor unsocialized cats fixed and vaccinated. The county animal care agencies who do the surgeries never bother with cones as they'd be very impractical. Captivity is very stressful for unsocialized cats, so the standard of care in TNR is to hold them overnight post-surgery (to be sure anesthesia has fully worn off, don't want a loopy cat wandering into traffic) and release in the morning. Any cone would have to come off at that point, and it's problematic to handle a fully alert unsocialized cat.
