The Courage of a Cat

Posted on April 21, 2003 in Book of Days Cats Silicon Valley

Note: This is sixth in a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days.

Today’s topic: Something seemed different….

The asthmatic whines, the slow limping up the stairs. Tracy paused on each step as if she had to rest a soreness far up the leg, a node of tenderness which demanded reprieve.

I saw it and mentioned it to Lynn about a year ago. She never saw the first stages of sickness or dying in a pet. I was the one who marked the signs, who said “Ambrose is heaving like he’s trying to throw up and can’t” and “Virginia’s face is all swelled up.”

One night — after midnight — I noticed that Virginia’s face was lopsided. The chase ensued and I caught her. “Jesus Christ, Lynn!” I exclaimed. “There’s an abcess here on her face!” Because it was a work night for Lynn, I made the calls, gathered cat and carrier, and drove through the darkness. I found the place using only my knowledge of Los Altos streets and a stop at a phone booth to check the yellow pages. Poor Virginia cringed inside the cat carrier, her body getting pulled and pushed, left and right, by the unseen forces instigated by my turning of the wheel.

I found the place after twenty minutes of methodical searching — tests and crosstests of direction, cutting off the occupied parts of my cognitive map until I zeroes in on the street where the 24 hour animal hospital stood.

I took her inside. The nurse made me fill out the paperwork. Though the vet tried to dissuade me — “This is going to be gross” — I insisted on going in.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I don’t like the cutting part. I’ll look away while you do that. And if it gets too bloody for me, I won’t try to stop what you’re doing because I know you’re working for the good of my cat. But I may walk out. But I think I can handle it, except for the cutting.”

He allowed me to stay under those conditions. And I stuck through the whole of the surgery, helping the nurse hold the cat down and giving her comfort and praise. The whole procedure was done without anesthetic. The doctor told me that cats often didn’t feel the pain in that spot. Virginia appeared more annoyed by the fact that two large humans held her down than by anything the vet did. She never squealed or thrashed, though once she gave us a pathetic look, a shine and a widening of the eyes.

Seven days of nursing followed. Twice each day, we had to catch her, hold her to the ironing board, and clean the wound with a Q-tip soaked in hydrogen peroxide. Virginia held still while we did this. But then we had to force feed the banana-flavor antibiotic. Claws came out. Her muscular legs attempted to spring her body off our impromptu operating table. Once she got away and ran and ran until Lynn cornered her in the kitchen. As my wife crouched for the snatch of the cat, Virginia mewed and whimpered. “How,” she asked in her feline tongue, “how can you make me eat that stuff?”

It was the only part of the procedure that she resisted or cried over.

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Tomorrow’ topic: This is not about….