Personal Cat-astrophe Author: Wes Payne Email: n9548326@wwu.cc.edu Date: 1998/06/18 Forums: alt.tasteless, rec.pets.cats Ordinarily, I'd not bother to burden the readership with my own personal problems, but my dear, esteemed cat has taken ill, thanks to my dipshit, fucknuckle roommates who let him outside near the beginning of my extended absence in April and promptly forgot about him. It seems, as best as anyone can guess 'cause the specific test for his ailment came back negative, he's got some blood parasite named hemo-somethingorother that's tearing his red blood cells inside out. However, his bloodworks and symptoms strongly indicate such an infestation (feline leukemia test also came back negative, and false negatives for FeLV are really, really rare), so the vet is continuing treatment. Now my cat's got an IV cathether and a pet of his own, a big plastic bag full of fun fluids that goes everywhere he does, which isn't far. Until he loses his yellow tinge (owing to oodles and gobs of excess bilirubin in his blood from the destroyed blood cells) and stops barfing all over creation, he's gonna be a guest of the vet. Anyone remember Groucho Marx's crack about a parked taxi with the meter running? Anyway, that's not why I'm writing this. Sure, I am aggreived. I'd rather have my cat healthy, happy, and pissing on things that he ought not to than have him at the vet in guarded condition, with all involved unsure as to whether or not next week's party is going to be a homecoming or a wake. He's my pet cat, and I hold him in higher esteem than many humans I've known, which either says bad things about my ability to relate to people, or confirms that line from the Deteriorata about how a walk through the ocean of most people's souls would scarcely get one's feet wet. So I worry and wring my hands like a concerned parent who's sprog's gotten all sick and crawly and hope that my dear ball of shedding fur doesn't become a candidate for rendering plant residency. I'm also making a point to visit the little bastard daily and check up on him, the much better to ensure that his latest liquid laugh ends up on my shoulder than on the floor of his hospital cage. Today's visit went well -- he's a bit stronger or, at least, I was able to get him to purr audibly, which was better than he could manage just this weekend. Of course, he looks pathetic with his yellow tinge and the big bandage holding the IV catheter in place but he's my cat, and I try not to think about how many convenience stores I'm going to have to rob in order to pay the bill which will come whether he survives or not. Of course, one meets such wonderful examples of humanity at the veterinarians, and that's why I'm boring you today. Before I start, I should sicken you all by telling you that he's a siamese-orange tabby mix. Therefore, everywhere a siamese would normally be darker gray, he's orange tabby. So I have (or had) a big white cat with orange highlights, blue eyes, and thick, soft fur that sheds in clouds and makes possible really hoary flea infestations. (BTW: fleas carry the pathogen which we suspect is ailing him) Also, please know that I'm not his first owner and I did not name him. The story starts like this: I walked into the vet's office and the clerk asked the name of the cat I had come to visit, and I told her. This old bird sitting in the waiting area started cackling. A potentially infelicitous move. "Dumplin?" she horked, as though it was the silliest thing she'd heard all century. Inwardly, I raged -- homicidal ideations flashed across my consciousness in quick succession. Outwardly, I was calm. I wanted to grab her by her wrinkled throat and lift her bony carcass off of her seat, pinning it solidly to the wall with only my left arm. "All is not right in my world," I'd growl with otherworldy malice, "I come here today to look upon the object of extreme personal tragedy, and you DEIGN to mock ME? You DARE??" Of course, she'd try to gag some sort of apology out of her pencil neck, but it would be trapped by a grip that held her as surely as though my fingers were fashioned of steel and welded around her spine. Behind my eyes, hellish flames of life-ending wrath would dance about, singing their secret song, a single note high and thin and pure, compounding and doubling and building upon itself like the interest of a demonic usurer's loan. "That name," I'd continue, as she continued to struggle, as hatred and fury boiled through my veins like molten silver, "belongs to a mere animal, perhaps, but I place more esteem on the well-being of that simple creature than I do a great many humans including, as of your worthless, putrid, insolent, callous utterance, yourself." Her eyes would bulge out as tender parts of her neck were crushed together, as her larynx snapped and her own life's blood began to flood into her niggardly lungs, as the vertabrae in her neck became so many bony shards within the immutable, unstoppable rage that she'd so carelessly unleashed. As her flesh squeezed between my fingers and after I'd felt the tiny chunks of bone and cartilage grind themselves into pieces small enough for my satisfaction, I'd toss the lifeless, voiding corpse off to the side like yet another discarded toy and absently wipe her ichor off of my hand on the sleeve of a stunned bystander. But instead, I replied "You should see him," and immediately dismissed her as yet another irrelevancy. And people accuse me of being heartless.