It was a hell of a week between hosting all those Shakespeare enthusiasts and giving First Aid to our little boycat Abe - and then 30 minutes before that big soiree began I got told I had to bring him BACK to the hospital for some critical care. He just had no interest in eating and drinking. He just sat in his doggy bed looking resigned. Abe HAS a doggy bed instead of a kitty bed for two reasons. Because (a) are you kidding, cats don't have kitty beds, they have YOUR bed; and (b) he’s such a wild man ordinarily that we had to buy the bigger, doggy-style bed and then stick it inside a giant metal rabbit hutch because it’s the only way we can transport him without having him undergo a total freak-out. And sure we feel like crazy peopled carrying around something the size of a doghouse but it’s the only way we can keep from going stark raving mad with a cat yowling on the seat beside us. In this cage he can see where he’s going and that calms him down some. Here in his sickroom I’ve taken the cage part off and put a fate up at the door. I figure it gives him something soft to sit on instead of just having a bare floor in his solitary confinement.
The next morning when it was time to go back to the animal ER I couldn’t face that gigantic contraption. It was just too big and me alone with the chore. Instead I put him in soft sided gym-bag of a cat carrier, the kind cat-owners use, the kind his meek sister Charlotte rides in without complaint but we weren’t half a mile into the journey when he started fighting his way out. First, his head nose emerged. Then his head popped up like a jack in the box head. When his shoulders began emerging it seemed to me like childbirth all over again and he with him struggling so mightily I just started laughing. “Abe I’m going to lose control of the car and we’re BOTH going to die! “My blood is on your head Abraham!” I was yelling as I pressed on that small stubborn head.
But we didn’t die. We got to the hospital where the lovely internist spoke gravely of steroids and feeding tubes, of possible bone marrow investigations and I don’t know WHAT else, all because Abe’s red blood cell count was still dropping. I was there for four hours while they went back and forth with the tests and the deliberation, four hours as they finally took me into the back room to clue me in as to the actual dollars involved.
So Abe stayed another two nights and God bless him began making his way back to relative health with just a blood transfusion and an appetite stimulant.
As I drove away without him Wednesday I felt guilty relief. 15 minutes before the Shakespeare lovers has arrived the night I was in my nastiest clothes and covered with cat hair. Luckily our girl Annie came to do her magic with the food. While we read the play she squeezed heavenly substances out of a pastry cone and dragged bits if roast lamb through a trail of gorgonzola melt. Then when the reading was done, her dad appeared and started opening wine bottles. The Shakespeareans loved the wines and the foods and positively inhaled the traditional hot chocolate and at evening’s end announced they were coming to this house every month, never mind once a year.
I had a great time talking with them all, these men and women in their 60s, 70s and 80s but the nicest moment came when I had a minute with the one named Max who did such a great job reading Falstaff last year I remember it every time I see him. Tonight he had also read his part with such expressiveness and verve that I just had to say something.
I love to hear you read Max. In fact I love just seeing you! And you look so great.”
“I’m 97 years old!” he said with merry amazement and I thought to myself this is they way to be! Live to a hundred and go to every party!” And isn’t that what Abe’s trying to do, just a month shy of his 13th birthday in a world that seems to have ‘torn him a new one’ as the saying goes?
He’s home again as if 2 o’clock this afternoon and eating and drinking to beat the band. He has a shaved crotch of course and the fur on his legs where they attached the IV and the catheter are bare still too. And then of course there’s that crazy satellite dish he has around his neck so he won’t bite out his stitches but never mind all that. He’s here. He’s right here next to me on this double-wide chair, curled around a hot water bottle and watching me write.
David‘s in the other room reading the latest New Yorker and I can hear the girl cat Charlotte padding around wondering where the supper is.
Guess I’m starting to wonder that too. Guess it’s time to pull a little food out of the fridge, make a fire in the fireplace and let the weekend settle about us. Here in this house we’re feeling pretty good. Even though our purse is even lighter today than it was on Tuesday that’s OK I think. These two casts are part of our family, same as everyone else.
I feel grateful to both Dr. Haber who sure does know her Internal Medicine, and to Dr. Corti who can whisk off a whole penis like a magician whisks off that special tablecloth, and STILL leave enough in the way of “utensils” for a kitty to process the daily intake.
I’m grateful to Old Dave for opening all those wine bottles, for mixing it up so generally with a bunch of people he’d never laid on eyes before, and just generally for being a man outstanding in his field.
The doctors initially said “Put Abe alone in a small room with a paper-towel-lined litter box and a food source.” But now today they told me "Actually put him in YOUR room so you can watch him.”
So I guess that’s what we’ll try to do here in a couple of hours. But even if he’s loudly at work all night long trying to get around that cone bib and dig at his stitches, still: I’m pretty sure I’m going to sleep like a baby.
