pomegranate

Back at the Vet

Last week, I discovered my cat had worms, again.  I found pellets in her bedding, made the call to the vet, got her into her case, the Clipper 2, and we drove off to the vet where a client called my cellphone as we drove and she asked me how I was, and I told her I was fine, but my cat had worms, and Jewel meowed as if to punctuate the point, and then we had to hang up, because we had reached a tunnel, and then we hit another tunnel, and then we lost radio reception, and I introduced Jewel to the sophisicated sounds of my Bill Evans tape, and then we were back at the vet's again.

And this time, Jewel tried a new trick.  When I put the Clipper on the table and opened the door to let her out, she positioned herself so that she was facing the other way, and when I tried to lift her, she did that cat thing where all of a sudden, they feel 10 times heavier.  I thought it was quite ingenious.  And I said to her, "Jewel, I thought we had an agreement.  I thought at the vet, you were going to play the role of the perfect cat."  And then she relented and let me lift her out.

We had a different tech this day.  A young woman wearing tie dye and her hair were various shades of color never found in the natural world.  And I put Jewel on the scale and she told me that she thought that the Egyptians had it right, that all cats were truly gods.  She told me that she had a bumper sticker on her car where she had converted the Darwinian fish symbol into the shape of a cat.  I told her I understood.  Then she petted my cat, "Because I just had to," she said, "She's so beautiful."  Jewel let herself be lifted off the scale and leaned against me.

Then the vet came in and did more poking and prodding.  He told me my cat had a beautiful coat, and that she probably got the worms, because she is meticulous.  "If she just swallowed one flea," he said, "that could do it."  Then he told me the story of the scientist who discovered the antidote for worms by giving worms to herself.

"Now, that's dedication to your work," I said and he laughed.

They treat us well there.  They always give us a friends and family discount.  They are always extravagant in their praise, although well earned, to my cat.  It's always a nice place to go.

The Cat Theory

My latest theory on life is that things generally go well when I treat people like cats. I don't know if I was born into this world feeling this or whether it's something I just decided as a child, but long ago, I realized that for me, cats are divine creatures. That I was lucky to spend time in their company, that I enjoyed their companionship. That they are loving and loyal souls. That we sometimes both need space. That we needed to learn each other's language. That it's surprisingly easy to figure it out with the desire to know and the willingness to learn and to listen. That there are still boundaries set, decisions made. But the time is often this communion, where another's divinity is acknowledged and honored and a soul is seen as a soul.

Mavericks

The waves continue, and I really shouldn't be writing here, because I've got deadlines and livelines and rogue tapes showing up everywhere.

But, let me just write about my cat for a moment.

Things that have just struck me  in the past few days when I've been able to step out of work for a minute and look.

How I had left my jacket on a table, and she was curled up in the middle of it, looking so happy, looking to me as if she was a high school girl and she had just been given a varsity sweater.

This morning when she so wanted to play.  Why does she seem to always want to play when a deadline looms?  But today if I got up to do anything, she would pounce and tackle my legs and run off.  And since I tried to stay on task, I wasn't chasing her, she would run around me and then bolt away, as if was chasing her, as if maybe all this work had made me slow, and she had to show me again what a chase was. 

So, then I had to relent a bit.  I ran after her and hid become corners and then ran after her some more.  It's times like this when I think that it would be nice if she had a cat friend.

The Yellow Gloves

Yesterday, I put the yellow gloves on.

It was night time.  A question had been answered in the morning.

The day before, I watched Jewel scratch for a moment, and I thought, "I wonder if she has fleas."

That morning, talking to a friend on the phone, she jumped on my lap and a flea jumped off her.  Question answered.

So, that afternoon, I bought Frontline, the flea remedy that my vet thinks kicks ass, the medication kept locked in a case at the pet store, I imagine because it's so easily portable, and because a packet of three applications costs $47. 

And that night, I took out the package and put the glove on, because this stuff is toxic.  I don't want it near my skin.  And my cat took one look at me and took off.

For 10 minutes, Jewel ran circles around me, this woman with the yellow rubber gloves, trying to talk sense to her cat.  "It's for the fleas.  We need to do it."  And she'd tackle my legs and run in the other direction, and she could have kept running forever, I think, but I said please, and I said it had to be done, and I said it was for the best, and she stopped midway under the bed, and let me pick her up, and I applied the medicine, and let her run away again to the other room to be by herself, to perhaps feel some relief despite the intrusion.

Cat Mysteries

With both my cats, Pumpkin and Jewel, there are things that I've wondered:

1) Why are they so fascinated with the task of making a bed?  This is in fact something that I've universally noticed in cats.  There's something about that task, the putting on of sheets, that seems to hold an inherent fascination for cats.  I've never known one that hasn't had to get in the middle, to sit in the center of the top sheet, and then to act surprised when the next sheet covers them completely.  Sometimes, they then escape from this confine, but sometimes they allow the blanket to submerge them even further. At some point, with some lifting of the covers and prompting by the human bedmaker, they makes their grand escape, once again, from the tyrannies of bedding.  I don't know why this drama needs to be acted out on a regular basis, but my cats feel the need to do so.

2)  How long do they wait for me by the front door?  Sometimes I'd like to have a videocamera set up to record this activity.  Do they hear my footsteps?  Sense it through intuition?  Do they just park their bodies by the door once I leave and wait for my return?  I really hope it's a) or b).

.3)  Why do they like baseball?  Is it just the movement of the bat, the ball, the runners?  Is there something about the particular rhythm of it all that appeals to them?  I turn on the game and they settle down in front of the TV as if to say, "Now, I have something to watch."

The Story of the Well Behaved Cat

Today I had to give Jewel two pills that could frighten horses.

I called her over to me, sat her on my lap, took out the pills, opened her mouth, and popped them  in, one after the other.  She squirmed a tiny amount, but otherwise sailed through the procedure, staying on my lap after it was done, to just hang out with me for a while, while I petted her and thought in wonder, "Is this truly a cat?"

Sometimes I worry that I brag too much about Jewel, that it becomes obnoxious to have such an easy cat, one who when you set a hoop in front of her, she says, "Okay" and proceeds to jump through it.  Sometimes, I feel like I should take her aside and say, "Listen, I might have led you astray.  Real cats are supposed to hiss and scratch and hide and poop on the rug and barf up hairballs.  I've expected different things from you, and that's what you've done.  But people remark on your beauty and your apparent happiness.  You seem to flourish this way."

I tell her what's coming down the pike when I know it.  When I thought she had worms, I said so, and told her that we'd have to go to the vet that day and there might be medications involved, and according to when they'd have to be administered, she might have to be boarded there over the following weekend, as I was going away on a trip, and it was important that she get her meds, and I couldn't ask someone other than a professional to do that for us while I was away.  And when it turned out to indeed be worms and that the treatment was a shot there and two pills two weeks later and flea medicine once a month, I told her that's what we were going to do.  So, that's why I think she's so calm.  I think it's because I tell her the rhyme and the reason, and she has a sense of the scope of it and that it is for her greater good.  A lot of people would think that's a dingy way of looking at things, but that's what I believe, and so far it seems to have worked.

Back to the Vet

Yesterday, I learned some things about cat care that I will now promptly share:

1)  In terms of flea care, Front Line is the way to go.  I tried Advantage in the latest flea go round and it was ineffective from the start.  Last night, I gave my cat Front Line, and the stratching has flat out stopped.

2)  If you find flat sesame seed pellets where your cat has been sleeping, these are tapeworms.  My vet told me that before they reach the sesame seed status, they are alive and moving, and so I'm glad that I saw them when they just looked like seeds and weren't behaving like worms.

3)  Some symptoms of tapeworms:  the sesame seeds and stinky poo, the two indicators that got me to take my cat to the vet yesterday.  Apparently, according to my vet, tapeworms don't cause diarrhea, but they can cause vomiting, particularly if it's a long time situation.

4)  When I went to the vet, another client turned away from the counter, peered into my cat's carrier, the Clipper 2, and said to me, "That's a happy cat."  I said she was, but she was also right now probably a wormy cat.  He then asked the receptionist if his dog could have gotten worms from eating the cat's food.  She said no, that cats get worms from eating their fleas, another fact previously unknown to me.

5) The remedy for worms:  a shot and two pills two weeks from now.

Again, my cat bowled me over.  She went into the Clipper with nary a squirm, and basically acted like a dream cat for the entire time, which is significant, because it's the vet, and also because the vet is 45 minutes away from my home.  It made me grateful that I seem to attract dream cats.  It made me wonder.  Is Jewel naturally sweet or did she become that way because I always call her Sweetie?  Do they start out as cream of the crop or change because that's how I see and treat them?  I don't know the answers, but it's something I think about often.

Her New Favorite Place

Lately, my cat, Jewel has found a new favorite place.  She likes to sit on the end of my clavinova, the standing electronic keyboard that I have lately been playing.  She often makes an entrance, jumping first on the keys to add her musical contribution to the day, a Jackson Pollack splash of dissonance by settling on her perch, sometimes fastening her eyes on me, sometimes devoting her attention to the keyboard, watching the fingers dance while I play.

It's been one of those events that have reminded me of the difference of cats.  My cat, Pumpkin, would give me a filthy look if I turned on the keyboard.  She would take a slow, deliberate walk over the door and begin to howl, even though I then often played with the headphones on.  It always made me wonder.  Was there some vibrational frequency that hurt her ears?  Was it the phenomenon that happens with small children--that they see their parents absorbed in something other than them, and they do anything to break that bubble of bliss and get their parents back again?  It was always one of those mysteries, and it's interesting to see another cat's approach,  Jewel's quiet insistence on participation.  She lies on that stand as if she's consecrating the beat, as if she's a part of this venture, and she has made that true.

The Annual Visit

Last week, I took my cat, Jewel, to her annual check-up at the vet.

It's one of those red letter days, those once a year events circled and starred on the calendar, one of those things I wouldn''t want to forget, because my vet is 45 minutes away--it's not something to remember at the very last minute, and besides I really like him.

So, an hour before the appointment, I got out the trusty Clipper 2, a sturdy plastic carrier with plenty of windows, actually designed for two cats, but I thought Jewel would like to have some room.  I picked Jewel up, and did the old cat trick of lowering her into the carrier backwards, so she wouldn't fight me as much.  And she did a few token squirms, but that was it.

And then we drove.  It was a day where the A's had an early baseball game in Detroit, so we listened to the pregame on their ride there, with commentary punctuated every now and again by a remark from Jewel as if to say, "What are we doing?"  or to say, "I'm a little out of my comfort zone here.  Please pay some attention to me." 

Besides getting her shots, one of the reasons why I wanted Jewel to go to the vet was to check her weight.  When I adopted her two years ago, she was a skinny cat.  As an indoor settled in cat, she's put on some poundage.  And the vet's first comment when he saw her, "My, she's big."

"Too big?" I asked.

"Borderline," he said.  We talked about her diet, what and how much she ate.  We talked about exercise.  He recommended the Cat Dancer and a laser beam toy.  He said, "Let's not change her food yet."  He said, "We're just talking about this issue now.  Let's see how she does in a year." 

She sailed through her shots, and when it was done, I opened the door to the Clipper 2, and she settled back in.  We drove home, listening to the game on the radio.  I was sure proud of my cat.

Anniversaries

This past Sunday, my cat, Jewel, and I had a disagreement.

I declared that not everything in our home was her toy.  That included the green lamp on the desk with the light chord that a cat, like Jewel, for instance, could bat around with ease and delight.

Jewel begged to differ.  In fact, she tried four times to play with the light.  Each time, I picked her up and put her down on the ground.  The indignity.  Once she ran away, as if to pretend it never happened.  Once she ran away like a desperado cooking up a new plan.  Once she ran away as if to say, "I've met the Big Cat again, but I've lived to tell the tale."  Once she ran, then pivoted, and tried to tackle my leg, one of her favorite battle tactics.

Finally, I had a thought.  "What if moved the light?"  So, the fifth time, Jewel jumped up there and batted the lamp string, I walked over ahd picked up the object and walked away.  Even as I was walking, I wished I had done it differently. It's like when you get a new cat.  All the experts say you're supposed to get a friend to bring the new cat in, so the veteran cat doesn't associate you with this troubling event.  Why couldn't I have just put the lamp away when her back was turned?  I didn't want it to be her shiny toy, but I didn't want to be the Grinch either.

I stuck the lamp up in the closet, and went back and talked to my cat.  I told her I would get her some new toys, toys meant for her, toys just for her.  She looked back at me in a disbelieving manner.  And it's been two days and I've been really busy, but I haven't gotten those toys, but I will.  I really will.

The whole thing made me think of my cat, Pumpkin, who would never do this, I thought.  She was more a cuddly cat, more prone to snuggling than fighting about what is a toy and what isn't. 

Then Jewel focused on the computer wiring.  All of a sudden, it looked like something good to chew.

"What is with you today?" I asked her. 

She seemed to want to assert herself.  She seemed to want to see if she misbehaved, if she would still be loved.

The next day, I realized that Sunday had been the second anniversary of Pumpkin's death.  Maybe it was a coincidence, but the events made me think of her and Jewel all day.   Later on this week is the second anniversary of the day I met Jewel.  I have been blessed to know these animals.