It all started on Monday, when I had to take one of our cats in to get her teeth cleaned.
Now, before you roll your eyes and think, “Oh, you’re one of those kinds of pet owners,” please know that really, I am not. Trust me when I say that if you had to spend any amount of time near this cat and her breath, you would know that this was as much for our benefit as it was for hers. (And yours, if you ever came over to our house to see us.)
Also, the vet was all scary with her words like “bacteria”, and “infection”, and “damage”, and call me soft if you will, but I guess I am a sucker for keeping my pets alive.
So she went in early Monday morning and was ready to be picked up late that afternoon.
“We’re a little grumpy,” said the vet assistant in what had to be the most enormous understatement in all of time as she brought Pip out in her cage, and lo, the earth trembled from the force of her rage.
But I could deal with the cursed waves of pure hatred that were emanating from the cat carrier, along with the snarling, spitting, hissing, growling, etc. It was what came next that has me teetering on the brink of running away from home.
“Here is some gel that you need to rub on her teeth once a week in order to prevent plaque buildup,” they told me as I was checking out, “and here are some antibiotic drops that you need to give her twice a day until they are gone.”
Yes, I’m sure all of those things would be easy to do there in the vet’s office, where they have people whose only job is to hold the cats in place while others assault the various orifices of their body. But we don’t have anyone like that on staff here at our house. Here it is just me, because of course this is the week that my husband has been out of town with his father on their annual ski trip to Utah. (So naturally this is also the week that “just me” has had to deal with phone problems, internet problems, yucky things coming out of cats, and all of the people with all of their snake talk. Plus the mystery of why, all of a sudden on Tuesday afternoon, we had no power in 3 rooms of our house. But no breakers were tripped. And the electricity worked fine in the rest of the house).
I threw myself on the mercy of one of my friends, a fellow cat owner and a mom, who has had plenty of experience in getting living beings to do things they don’t want to do. She taught me how to lure Pip out with treats (much like an evil, twisted feline Pied Piper), trap her between my legs, immobilize her head, squirt the medicine into her mouth with a syringe, and force her to swallow it.
Twice a day we get to engage in this beautiful inter-species ballet. Plus, I had to buy a whole new pack of cat treats just for this week to get the other cats to leave us alone, especially Tigger, who thinks that Pip is getting some way cool kind of new cat food that he’s being denied, and who tries to lick the medicine right out of her mouth. That is, when he can tear himself away from batting his favorite toy under extremely heavy pieces of furniture for me to rescue. “Please, kitty mama, lift up the washing machine all by yourself and save my favorite green ball,” he squawks at me, over and over again.
And did I mention that yesterday in the mail I received a summons to jury duty, my 4th in 6 years? And that my husband, who actually wants to serve (oh, silly man) has never been called ONCE?
DUDE!
Seriously, folks, just stick a fork in me because I Am Done.
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