The lady was in the cat side of
reception, looking through the window at my receptionist. She'd never
been in before, and I could tell she was checking us out, to see if
we were worthy of her cat and her business. That's fine. I do the
same thing when I first visit a dentist or even a barber. You want to
be comfortable in such an environment.
I was on our side of the counter,
leaning and essentially worthless for the moment, although the staff
is polite enough not to ever say that. The lady seemed a bit, oh I
don't know, hostile is too harsh but she clearly wasn't just blending
in as I've come to expect from my clients. Then she saw the cat. That
was the deal breaker.
Jaws was lying on the counter, next to
Karen, our receptionist and the best friend of Jaws.
The back story. Jaws came to us as an
emaciated, flea infested, filthy orange and white striped eight
week old kitten. She was hungry, and she demonstrated that with her
rather prodigious appetite. She attacked food. So we named her, Jaws.
Jaws was, oh hell let's be honest, fat.
And she hung out with Karen, for when the office was closed for lunch
and Karen was eating said lunch at her desk, there was this other
plate where some of Karen's lunch showed up in front of Jaws every
day. The two were inseparable during business hours. I had no problem
with this, and my loyal clients loved to see Jaws on the counter,
digesting part of Karen's lunch.
Anyway, this lady saw Jaws on the
counter next to Karen, and she just about screamed. She was incensed.
She was outraged.
“There's a cat on your counter.”
Ah, yep. That's Jaws. She lives here.
“That's unsanitary. I'd never bring
my cat into a place like this!”
Oh, well that's fine. Maybe you should
just leave and go find some other veterinary hospital where the
resident cat doesn't hang out on the counter. Because you will never
be happy here.
Good luck with that. In my experience,
most veterinary hospitals have what we call hospital cats. Such cats
are generally fat, and they hang out on counters or wherever they
damn well please, and the people working in those veterinary
hospitals love those cats far better than they like BITCHY OLD SELF
IMPORTANT WITCHES!
Oh, I'm sorry. Was I shouting?
In my experience, most veterinary
hospitals, filled with people who care about their clients' animals, always
have a few of their own beloved companions hanging about the place.
It's just me talking here, but I wouldn't be comfortable in a
veterinary hospital that didn't have a few, uh, normal challenged,
animals living there.
Normal challenged?
Yeah, I usually say that you have to be
defective to work in a veterinary hospital, but my wife takes some
offense at that, and says for the animals at least, I should use the
term, “normal challenged” when speaking about the cats and dogs
living in veterinary hospitals.
Ya see, most of the animals living in
veterinary hospitals have had issues before they came to live with
us. Often they are missing various parts, a toe, a leg, a tail, an
eye. They often have been abandoned by uncaring owners, or simply
adopted by the staff when somebody wanted them dead because they were
missing a part or were something less than perfect. They say the
fastest route to insanity is to care more for the animals than the
people who own them, and that may be true. But, it certainly is the
fastest route to accumulating a few more hospital cats.
I look back on our hospital cats, to
Moocher, Sam, Momma Tom, Kung Foo, Spaz, Jaws, Mohamed Ali, One Eyed
Jack, Quirk, Lefty, Jill, and Herky and I wouldn't trade one of them
for the opportunity to serve a woman who couldn't stomach seeing one
of ours in our own hospital.
I was thinking about Herky today. He
came to us as Herkimer, a ten month old tomcat who got into one too
many cat fights, and sustained an abscess in the middle of his back,
the consequence of a bite wound. We sent home the usual antibiotics,
and all would have been fine except that this bite wound had
penetrated to the bone of one vertebrae. The owner noticed that
Herkimer was paralyzed at some point and after letting this steep for
far too long, and when it didn't “get better by itself”, finally
rushed him in. Not surprisingly, he was still paralyzed. Another
course of antibiotics actually returned him to normal, but when the
owner didn't follow up as we had suggested with further treatment
with more antibiotics, he went down in the rear again. When they
finally brought him back in, his rear legs were history. They
couldn't have cared less.
So Herky came to live with us, and for
the next twelve years he slid around our hospital with two good front
legs and a back end that came along for the ride. He couldn't feel
anything behind his last rib, so he bathed to there and stopped. He
built up some fine callouses on the right side and slid along the
smooth concrete floors as if they were designed for him. We tried to
build him a cart, but he kept spinning out in the corners, so we just
let him do as he preferred.
Some clients saw Herky sliding along
the floor, and they felt sorry for him. They'd ask if we were going
to put him to sleep because he was suffering, and then he'd slide up
to them and rub his chin against their ankles purring until they'd
pet him, and then it would dawn on them that he was actually a pretty
happy cat. And he was.
What I remember best about Herky was
his wisdom. From time to time I'd have one of those days when I'd
rather be the janitor in a porno theater than to continue this
nonsense of being a veterinarian. I'd wander back to the kennel to
Herky's home expecting some sympathy, some understanding from a
paralyzed cat when I was having a bad day.....and he would bite me.
It kinds boiled down to one simple thing. Herky wouldn't listen
unless I brought a complaint with some legitimacy. If I was just
whining, he'd bite me. Come to me when you've got something important
to say, and I'll listen. Smart cat. I learned much from him.
Due to his medical issues, Herky
couldn't pee on his own. We needed to hold him over the sink and with
gentle finger pressure, we'd empty his bladder each day. When we let
him out of his cage each morning, he'd slide around on the floor
until he moved his bowels, and that took care of that, most days. But
each and every day, somebody needed to express Herky's bladder. On
Sunday, that was my job.
Before doing anything fun on Sunday, my
only day off, so to speak, I would first have to drive over the hill
to the clinic, and squeeze Herky. It became something of a routine.
Once I'd done that, my day off could begin. For twelve years.
Right now, we are remodeling our home, because when we finally sell the practice and we can retire, the house
will also be sold and we will move to paradise for the remaining days
of our lives. So right now, our cats are living at the clinic. So
that means, on the weekends I get to drive over the hill to the
clinic and make sure the litter pans are clean and the cats have
fresh water and food. I was doing just that today, and while I
enjoyed the scenery on the drive, it dawned on me that as many times
as I have done this, this drive over the hill to the clinic to care
for the cats at the clinic on the weekends when normal people are
simply enjoying their weekends away from their work, I would soon no
longer need to fulfill this duty..... and that brought a tear to my
eyes.
