Taming the Were-Lion
OR A Perspective of Love
We’re
always had cats, as long as I can remember.
When I was little, they were scruffy “barn “cats that lived outside and
came in to top up their nutrition in the way of cat food and milk and to lie in
front of the fireplace (sometimes a mouse went free if they really liked the cat
food of the day!). I would sneak them
into the house in the winter and they all learned that climbing a tree and
crossing the roof to my bedroom window was a sure warmth winner.
One of the
first things I did upon leaving the familial birthplace was to buy a pedigree
Siamese cat (which I loved that breed thanks to Lady and The Tramp (even though
Am and Si were villains in that movie)) I also decided said cat would become
and always be a housecat. No dog, no
cars, no wildlife would threaten my precious bundle of fur. The dynasty of house cats continued as one of
the first things my husband and I did when my daughter reached a responsible
age was buy a pedigree Siamese cat for her too.
The love of cats lives on in her and even reached a higher degree. Unknown to us until she was older, she became
“the goddess of cats” in that almost any stray, unknown, un-pedigreed, or hurt
cat would come to see her when she was in the vicinity.
Fast
forward to daughter grown and living on her own with cats, we’re moving
overseas to begin my husband’s ex-pat career and our cats must be given to
loving homes because we didn’t have the money to ship them with us AND they
were backyard adopted cats (except one who was a piddler) so we didn’t feel too
horrid for finding them good homes. And
it was amazing how fast we placed 3 adult cats to loving homes. We remained cat-less for a number of years
but took any opportunities to care for cats including babysitting cats at our
apartment in Singapore.
We remained
cat-less through a couple of rotations on the ex-pat roller coaster but decided
to adopt and give some cats that started out with a rough life a very good home
of love and luxury. Hence we headed off
to the local pet shop one Saturday. Our
intent was to get adult cats but I had to buy something in the back of the
store and by the time I returned to the adoption area, my husband was cuddling
a small bewildered and upset Tortie-point Siamese kitten. How anyone could abandon anything so gorgeous
and precious is beyond me but Godiva went home with us that day, 9 years
ago. And since we don’t believe in one
cat living alone when we’re off to work
or whatever, Puff went home with us that day too, a brown Mackerel Tabby. I grew attached to Godiva more than Puff and
Puff became my hubby’s cat.
Godiva is
sweet and loving and fluffy and soft and cute and pretty and funny and
adorable. She makes us laugh when she
rolls over to have a belly rub (she’s been called a “belly-Ho” because she’ll
roll over for anyone!) Puff is a bit
harder to love as he’s well named because he’s afraid of everything and when he
was little, the smallest noise would make him puff –up to appear
ferocious. Godiva was kind and loving to
everyone. She wasn’t afraid to go anyplace
with me and hardly ever hissed or growled except when in mock battle with
Puff. So imagine my surprise when around
the age of 2 (her age, not mine), she went to the vet for a bit of an infection
or belly ache or whatever (can’t even remember why she went now) and suddenly
the vet is “expressing her anal glands” which in my opinion didn’t need doing
and if I had known what the vet planned to do, I would have stopped it.
This one
act is what changed my sweet baboo into a snarling, clawing, hissing, growling,
snapping, and biting were-lion. She so
hated this procedure that since that episode (7 years ago), she has hated any
vets and vet office and lets them all know it the minute we walk in the
door. She is extremely difficult in the
examining room and vets have barely been able to touch her. She must be dragged kicking and screaming
from her cage to get onto the examining table and sounds like she is being
tortured. Whenever I leave from the vets
examine room, all eyes in the waiting room are on me, wide eyed in terror and disbelief
from the sounds they have just heard – their pets quivering in fear at the
imagined torture they must now face upon entering through that same door.
As such, it
usually then falls to me to help hold her because she is calmer with me
involved. That doesn’t mean she stops
snarling and hissing and growling and fighting to escape, it just means they
have maybe a 20% better chance of touching her and examining her. Last night we had to do an emergency run to
the vet because Godiva was doing the “I’m in pain, Mama!” cry. That changed to the “snarl – why am I in the
cage, Mama?” to “growl and hiss – hated vets office, get me out of here!!!
*($%!***!!*%#)”
The vets
are great in that they are worried she might bite me. (She never has except for
play bites and when she is injured and my fingers get in the way of her mouth)
I said, she probably will if she gets a chance and my fingers get in the way so
this vet offered to take her into the back with her “properly trained in
handling irate animals” personnel so they could examine her. Less than 10 minutes later, they were
back. The vet said they couldn’t touch
her or get her out of the cage! My sweet
baboo has gone were-Lion again and turned into the snarling monster of the
beasts. The vet suggested that maybe it
would be better after all if I held her so Godiva comes back to the examining
room, still yelling at the world through her cage door and I am able to grab
her and get her out and hold her while the vet has a look. Poor baby.
She has some kind of infection again but since my regular vet had been
working on it for the last month, the emergency vet thought it best if I get
medication from them. She was able to
give Godiva a pain injection so she could make it through the night. The emergency vet was also amazed that her “trained
personnel to handle irate animals” was unable to handle her and yet I could
grab her and hold her and calm her down (to an extent) so that she could be
examined. We trudge back home with her
doing the minimal snarl and growl and hiss from her cage so we know that she
isn’t happy with the world, still, and then she does the “get away from me” to
Puff and for once, he seems to understand he is going to get his clock cleaned
if he messes with the were-lion.
Sweet baboo
has become a mess from being at the vets.
She always does animal imitations when the purpose suits her. At vets, she does her best squid imitation
but instead of squirting ink to disappear, she drops a whole kitten’s worth of
fur and figures she can disappear into a fur cloud. She also tries to imitate monkeys who will
fling their feces at targets. She just
lacks the flinging part but has the getting out the feces in case she ever
figures out how to fling part well in hand. So once home, she needs to be cleaned and we
need to start her on her medication. I
am able to get most of her wiped off until I start on her lower belly which
still must be giving her some pain as she scratches out while trying to turn
over and leave and I get stabbed a couple of times in the arm. We have to grab her again to give her the
meds and it is a huge syringe that has to be pushed into her mouth but it is so
hard to push it that I need my husband’s help to hold her and push the
syringe. She didn’t get all of her meds,
maybe about half. The rest went all over
me. We should have waited about ½ hour
as she mellowed from the pain killing shot and turned back into my sweet
baboo.
Today I get
to take her to the regular vet to see if they can figure out what is wrong with
her. I hope I don’t have to leave her
because she will turn into a were-lion once we reach the vets door and I don’t
need the death of a trained professional in animal handling on my
conscious.
Obviously
we love our cats. We joke about my
daughter’s cats and call them our “grand-kitties” since we have no
grandchildren. We laughingly figure out
the relationships between our fuzzy “kids” and my daughter’s fuzzy “kids”. And when necessary, we spend a heap load of
money on them as in last night’s emergency vet.
When you love your pets, the money is paid, albeit sometimes with a huge
grimace or a juggle to take the money from something else, but we would find
the money somehow to keep them going for we love their companionship, their
antics, and their love back to us (yes, yes, some don’t agree that cats are
that loving but ours are). So our
perspective is that the money is the least of the problems when your loved one
needs help. And anyone who loves their
dog, cat, rabbit, bird, fish, snake, hamster, fox (I add this because someone I
know had a pet fox) will somehow try and find the money to help their pet in
distress. It cost us 145 POUNDS to go to
the emergency vet last night and walk in the front door. Then we had to pay for the meds and any other
treatment Godiva got. Luckily I didn’t
have to pay for an emergency room visit for any human personnel at the local
A&E. When we walked into the vet’s
office, a couple were paying and getting ready to leave. Their pet of love was a large rabbit! So 145 pounds for the rabbit was also an acceptable
price when dealing with their love of their pet. I do admit that I might not have felt so inclined
to spend that much on a pet rabbit but what do I know. Love is powerful and ya
gotta do what’s necessary to work it and keep it going even if it means a lot
of money for the life of an animal that is probably not going to last your
whole life. The time our cats spend with
us is ever so precious and wonderful and worth the money. Perspective!
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