Once you get used to high drama you begin creating it all around you, ever notice? I’m noticing it today and wondering if in fussing over this poor post-operative cat of mine I didn’t start turning into someone really odd like this little person you can see by double clicking on these words. Or like that old Bouvier lady who lived with her crazy daughter and a million cats in that tumbledown house in the Hamptons. (You’ve heard of Grey Gardens right? and the two of them spending day and night in this one messy bedroom eating ice cream right from the carton while the cats ate their cat food right from the can and circled and stank and wove in and out like snakes?
I’m thinking now that I maybe HAVE gone a wee bit OVERBOARD with worry over my poor kitty with his stitches.
I got him home from his second trip to the world’s most elaborate quadruped cat hospital and 24 hours later he still hadn’t wet for me, which I knew very well because the doctors had said in no uncertain terms to mind his comings goings, as it were. “Put him in the bathroom for these three weeks, where he won’t be tempted to jump up and hurt his stitches,” they said. “ And keep an eye on him at all times. “
“So what, I should sleep in the tub” I asked.
“Ha ha, well ya, kind of.”
Instead I put him in a back room here in a special doggy bed with a hot water bottle and this worked fine after the first hospitalization. After this second visit though things took a downturn. I crept into his sickroom at 7am today and he was up on the brand new ottoman, and gave me that look, you know the one? “Yeah I'm on the furniture and sure I bled on it a little but fuck you, know what I ‘m sayin’?
Naturally it’s a shock when you’re cat swears at you but the worse news was that he hadn’t gone to the bathroom AT all. His litterbox was dry as a bone.
And when I lifted him oh so gently and placed him in there, he got right out again.
Then, when I carried him to our, bathroom normally a palace of beauty and order now crowded with tuna-flavored cat meds and a food dish and a SECOND litterbox and tried putting him in that, he lay right down in it as if to say “I will sleep in this thing and I will DIE in this thing before I use it the way you want me to use it.”
That’s when I panicked and called the hospital. “He’s blocked again!” I said. “Even with a giant stoma in place of his little garden hose, he can’t pee !”
“Someone will call you right back,” they said
But could I wait? I could not. I put him right in the car and started for the place so when they did call back and say “Bring him in, Mrs. Marotta, by all means bring him right in,” I’d be in the door like a flash. I was literally in the parking lot and on the actual brink of hustling him inside when I suddenly thought Wait a minute T. This is gonna be 200 bucks more. JUST IN CASE why don’t you drive over to Target and buy YET ANOTHER kitty toilet and even more paper towels on account of how he absolutely can’t let regular litter touch his little underside. Let’s so this and just see if he’ll go to the bathroom that way, right in the back of my nice little minivan.
So I turned around and headed for Target and ten minutes later was back in the car with the goods . I let Abe out of his cage and placed him in this newest rest room. And gain I got the look. And then … and then …he noted a little spilled litter from a week ago when I’d bought a 400 pound sack of the stuff because nobody told me he wasn't going to be able to use it…. A teensy dusting was spilled on the rug in the way-back…. And this he saw. And this he took a sniff of , scratched. Took another sniff; scratched some more- and then went to the bathroom both ways right on the rug.
And the scary thing is I was thrilled. I’ll worry tomorrow about the fact that I’ve invited two elegant older ladies to enjoy a kind of indoor picnic at the country’ oldest cemetery with me right in this very car on Thursday.
Because you know it as well I do: cucumber sandwiches and sherry under the sheltering trees in a gorgeous historic venue are all very well. And I know we will have a lovely lovely time. But having a pet who can find relief when relief has long eluded him – well that’s even better. So crack open a can of tuna and bring on the Mocha Almond, Aby babe. Tonight in our porcelain palace we are CELBRATING !
