Cat-shooting Day

Gimpy (Jersey) unaware that it's vet day

                Jersey is off to the vet this morning to get an arthritis shot.  The shot usually lasts a good three months but because she was chasing squirrels up trees, it only lasted half as long.  It breaks my heart when she looks at me with those big black eyes and then slowly gimps on three legs across the room.  At least she is easily distracted from her pain. If I head for the food dish she forgets all about her stiff paw and sprints to the kitchen--sometimes I think I may be “being played.”  Anyway, it’s vet day for her.  Jersey is wonderfully stoic during vet trips.  Unfortunately, every time she’s three minutes into the 15-minute ride, she gets car sick all over the back seat. I really wish the shots lasted longer!

                Cat-shooting Day, as we affectionately call their annual shot and check-up visit, use to be a huge adventure in blood and slap-stick comedy, where it would take three people a good hour to corner one cat and get it into the pet carrier.  We became wiser with age and learned to sneak the carrier into the car a week early while the cats were busy napping.  Then when it’s time to go we just scoop them up like they are going to get cuddled and haul them out.

                Normally we take the cats in pairs.  We couldn’t stand to be in the car with more than that due to the caterwauling (believe me, it’s no coincidence that “cat” begins that word).  Anyone within a block of our car would swear we were pulling out toenails with pliers.  I should record them to use for Halloween sound effects.  If left to roam in the car—which we sometimes try thinking they would like to sit on our laps for comfort--a whole different set of issues arises—sitting on the dashboard in front of the driver, crawling under the brake pedal, climbing up the driver’s chest.  Mind you, the entire backseat and passenger’s side is available for exploration, but what fun is that?  It’s like they know exactly what the most troublesome things they can do are, and choose to do them—AHA!  I think I just figured out the secret of cats!

                At the vet’s office, they turn into quivering masses, stress-shedding fur so fast it looks like a snowstorm.  There is one cat, however, who rises to the occasion and is the model patient—you’ll never guess which one—Frank! (I know, who’d have seen that coming?)  Frank—who we’ve given the villain moniker “the Black Menace”—is absolutely delightful for the vet and her technician.  He purrs and runs through his series of supermodel camera poses for them and he lets them pet him and coo and ah over him.  He’s got every teacher’s pet on the planet beat.  We just watch with skeptical raised brows, “Really, Frank?”

                If the vet trip is a cat’s worst nightmare and at that moment Frank shines his brightest…I’m not even going to finish that thought.