2002-11-13 6:06 p.m.
My Cat Reaches For Her Smelling Salts
The other day, I got a cheerful little postcard in the mail, covered with frolicking kitties and puppies. This can mean only one thing -- time to bust out the Neosporin, kids, because TheCat's shots are due!
Getting TheCat into her carrier used to be a half-hour ordeal, involving much running around, cursing (on both her part and mine) and scratching. Things got a bit easier when I got a pair of oversized ski gloves, but it was still a pain. TheCat has a remarkable ability to transform herself from a dainty 6-pound ball of fluff into a sack of cement that construction workers would blanch at lifting. Unfortunately, crowbars were not an option, so even with the gloves it took at least 15 minutes.
After TheBoy became one of her humans, he introduced me to the joys of scruffing. Assuming we surprise her quickly enough, and there's one person on carrier and one on scruff duty, we can get her out of the house in less than 5 minutes.
Once she's in the carrier, though, Little Miss Piss and Vinegar, the cat who will slap the ankles of any human who isn't paying her proper homage, turns into a weeping puddle of goo. She pants. She shakes. Her eyes pop out to twice their normal size and her pupils follow suit. And she lets out piteous little squeaks instead of her usual brassy, rasping, demanding quacks. So by the time we get her to the vet's office (which can't be more than 2 miles away), there is no question in anyone's mind that we are the worst, meanest people on the planet.
From here it goes something like this: The Worst, Meanest People on the Planet slink into the vet's waiting room, carrier in hand. TheCat quivers and whimpers, silently pleading to passersby, until it's time to go to the examining room. There, a vet tech extracts her from the carrier (on more than one occasion, turning the carrier vertically), at which point The Worst, Meanest People on the Planet become her saviors and she suddenly recalls which one of us saved her furry ass from the Austin pound all those years ago.
Given half a chance, she'll go for my shoulder (clawing all the way up), so the next few minutes are spent soothing her and giving her somewhere to hide her head. (After all, if she can't see anyone, no one can see her, right?) Last time she scooted almost completely under my sweater. The vet must have thought I was pregnant until he saw the tail, at which point he broke up laughing.
TheBoy thinks the whole experience must be like an alien abduction to the poor cat -- she's hauled out of her home, slapped down on a cold steel table under bright lights, and gets probes shoved up her butt.
The mother ship leaves Monday at 6. Wish us all luck.