Stopped in at the veterinary the other day to pick up some cat food for my and my daughter's lovelies at home, the sweet furbabies that we love so much and that are adorable and loving and affectionate. The vet has this deal where if you buy 5 bags of a certain kind of cat food, any size, you get the 6th bag free, same size. So, even though it is not the favorite brand of our cats, we get the dental diet there occasionally and they love that one well enough. Had to wait as the vet assistant was helping another client with a very cute pug dog. When finished, I stepped up with my bag of cat food. She's busy typing on the computer and I figure she's finishing up with the pug dog information. Finally she turns to me and says 13.45 pounds please.
Hmmm, I want credit for my bags of cat food so I'll get my free one. So I say, "don't you want to put it on my account so I can get my free bag later?" and she says to me "I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. YOU HAVE A REPUTATION!" OMG.
Well, of course, she actually meant they know my sweet baboo, my wonderfully affectionate, loving, friendly, sit on my lap whenever possible to purr, sleep beside me at night, follow me into the bathroom whenever she can, get jealous if I pay attention to other cats Godiva. She's my cat just as much as one of the other cats is my hubby's and the third one is my daughter's. They all have their favorite human "toy".
Godiva is a Siamese and a wonderfully mixed color. All three are rescue cats, meaning we found them at an adoption center. My lovely furbaby took about 3 years before she became a true lap cat and began searching me out for petting and just to be near me. She's now 9 1/2 years old. At a young age, maybe 2, we had a bad experience with a vet in Houston who hurt Godiva in a way that she's never forgiven or forgotten. Since that time, there has been a Doctor Jeckle and Ms. Hyde transformation that comes over my sweet baboo whenever she enters a vets office, and even often when she is in the car riding to the vet's office. Everyone knows that cats can tell when they are on the way to the vet.
My loving kitty turns into a Tasmanian Devil, a cornered badger, a captive wolverine, a fighting rooster with spurs, or in other words, she gets as defensive and mean and nasty as she possibly can. Now, my kitty will NOT bite me or my daughter or my husband IF (and that's a big IF) she knows it's our hand there holding on to her and IF she's not scared and in pain. Once she got her foot caught in a rattan chair and fell off so she was hanging and screaming and struggling to get free. My daughter rescued her but got bit accidentally in the action. In that instance, I think Godiva would have bit anything close to her. But many times, I have been to the vet and held her while they take her temperature or give her a shot and she will be struggling and hissing and growling for all she's worth and trying to bite but will stop when she sees it's my hand holding her.
That said, it's extremely hard to hold her when she's struggling. she's an expert at wriggling free, even out of the neck scruff which almost always will immobilize a cat. Not her. She's so furry that it's hard to get a scruff on her. So usually it's me holding her and an assistant also trying to hold her and the poor vet trying to do something necessary because my baby is sick and everyone trying to avoid getting bit or scratched..
Once we had to take her to the emergency vet late at night. I got her out of the cage and this new vet was very afraid that she would bite me so she said "I have trained people who can hold her". As I really hate being a part of causing pain to my kitty, I said sure so we put her back in her cage and the vet took her into the back part of the surgery and we went out to the waiting room to - well, wait! Ten minutes later, we hadn't heard anything when the door opens the the vet steps out and says, "We can't get her out of the cage!". so I had to go back in the room, dump her out of the cage again, and hold her while the vet checked her and gave her a shot. So much for trained personnel.
On a different vet visit, the vet was really trying hard to listen to her chest and lungs and take her temperature. Godiva was screaming and howling and hissing for all she was worth. When I finally walked out of the treatment room, every single person in the waiting room was staring at me with expressions of horror and shock on their faces. I know they thought we were torturing her and killing her in that room. Even the dogs were sitting there quietly and quivering as if they were definitely afraid to go into the torture chamber next.
So you see, Godiva has quite the reputation and since I am the one that always takes her to the vet, apparently I am easily recognizable now as the "devil's owner". At the end of the day though, I got credit for purchasing my bag of cat food which Godiva will eat with great pleasure and after another bag or two, I'll get a free bag. That's all I wanted.
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