Bitchitorial

 

DVM - A License To Print Money

Sept 6, 2006

Nearly two weeks ago now, I came home to find one of the household cats sitting on my chair in front of my computer at the dining room table. Normally I keep the cushions up so that they don't get covered in cat hair and the seat isn't so inviting to cats. Like humans, the cats prefer the comfy cushions. At any rate, I tried to move him off with the usual gentle reminder push, but he was quite resistant so I rather roughly turfed him off with a more serious shove. As I sat there working at the computer, my sweetie said, "Echo is limping."

Oh shit.

I jumped up, a lump of guilt in my throat. Not because I'd done anything that could have hurt him, but because it was evident he was already injured when I turfed him off the chair and I didn't realize it. This is an indoor/outdoor cat whose main activity seems to be asking to get to the other side of a closed door.

Sure enough, he couldn't put his back leg down on the floor. We gently prodded it but he didn't seem tender in any way that indicated a break. We carefully picked him up and put him on the kitchen counter so we could examine him more closely. As my bf slid his hands down the cat's sides, feeling for injury, the cat screeched and nearly bit him. He pulled back sharply, and then very carefully, we lifted up his front legs so we could examine his belly.

He had a huge gash across his upper belly. It was matted with damp and dried blood and hard to really see, but we knew it was serious.

Argh. And we had people arriving for a very important business meeting in just 30 minutes. Why do cats pick the most INOPPORTUNE times to get injured, puke on the carpet, hack up a hairball, or otherwise create a disturbance?

I called the veterinary clinic - it was 6:30 but I knew they had later clinic hours. It turned out that they were open till 7 and would see him right away. My bf caged the poor guy, and rushed him in while I waited for our guests to arrive.

The bf called a bit later to give me the news. It seems the back leg was tender only because he had some kind of minor trauma to the pad of his paw. Other than that, the only injury was this enormous gash in his underside. They didn't think it was due to any kind of fight - there weren't the other tell-tale signs of a scrap. Their best guess was that he tried to leap over a chain link fence, and didn't completely make it.

Ick.

They said he seemed stable enough to keep overnight, but they'd have to operate the next day to stitch him up and put a drainage tube in. I swear I could hear the cash register ringing in the background as he spoke.

"How much?", I asked nervously.

(pause) "$850.00"

"Fuck," I said out loud.

But in my head I was saying, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuuck!"

But what do you do? It's my kid's cat. Yeah, my son is no longer living at home, but still... the little bastard is a family pet and I'm not THAT heartless that I would put an injured pet to sleep that has a good prognosis of recovery simply because it's too expensive.

Ok, well, I DO have my limits, but it's more than $850, and at this point the bf was willing to foot the entire bill because he is a MAJOR softie and has kind of adopted the cat as his.

In the end it cost $930 - some extra due to the surgery taking 20 minutes instead of the 15 that they predicted or some wild excuse like that.

NINE HUNDRED AND THIRTY DOLLARS.

For TWENTY fucking minutes of surgery. That's almost $3000 dollars an hour!

They nickel-and-dimed us to death with every little line item so it wouldn't seem so bad to see one big fucking anal rape of a bill.

There was "pre surgery prep" - what? They drugged him and shaved his belly.

There was "pre anesthetic prep"... they gave him a shot?

There was "post anesthetic support" - yeah, where he somehow managed to injure his eye because they were so careful with him?

Every bandage, every little suture was charged for. If they so much as looked at him, there was a fee attached.

I swear, it was like being at a US hospital.

I am convinced that veterinarians - or at least the ones I seem to have come in contact with - are devoid of a conscience. They prey on your guilt, knowing that most people will foot the bill to save their pets because like me, they won't say, "Oh, you have a cut, too bad, you have to die now."

Sure, I bet that money could have saved a kid in Africa from AIDS for at least a couple of years anyway, but the real price I would pay for that sacrifice would be my kids (and the boyfriend) never speaking to me again.

There just is no way of winning in a situation like that.

They say that doctors are just people who really wanted to be vets but couldn't get into veterinary school. I'm inclined to believe that lawyers are just people who couldn't make it into veterinary school. And I think at this point I have far more respect for lawyers.

Then there was the post-operative care once we got him home. Never mind the joys of trying to give a cat a pill twice a day, the poor little guy was just SO docile and mopey for the first little while. My great big hunter was, for the first time in his life, a lap cat.

This cat spent the first three years of his life chasing falling leaves in the yard, and not catching any. We found it rather comical. I suspect it was our laughter that goaded him into finally figuring out the whole hunting thing. Cat's hate to be laughed at. We laughed at him a lot in those years.

One day I started finding dead things on my front lawn, on my back lawn, by the back door. Each day it was a new adventure.

He was taking such a toll on the local bird population that I belled him in an attempt to mitigate the damage. Granted, most of his "presents" were starlings, which we can do without, but I still felt guilty. The real corker for me however, was when he had a murder of crows following him and staking out our house for an entire day, dive-bombing anybody who came or went. A week later a horrid stench lead us to search the grounds where we found one of their young, quite decomposed, under the ferns by the front porch. I'm not sure which is worse, cats leaving their uneaten kill stashed in hidden places, where they then rot and stink to high heaven, or cats eating their prey and leaving a mess of bird feathers all over the yard, making it look like an episode of the "Farm Film Celebrity Blowup" from SCTV - "Yep. Blowed up REAL good."

The bell made no difference. I'm convinced he runs on three legs, with one paw holding the bell. There are no mice left within a 2 block radius of our house. Squirrels are just too fast and vicious, so he steers clear of them. He's moved on to bigger prey.

The week before the cat's accident, my oldest son had been visiting and called me at work. In a very matter-of-fact voice he said, "Uh Mom, I think you should know. There's a headless rabbit on the front lawn."

I replied, "Uh, yeah, sorry about that. I noticed it on my way out the door, but I was already late to work. Don't worry, we don't have some kind of Fatal Attraction psycho hanging around - it's just another one of Echo's presents. He seems to have developed a taste for Hasenfeffer. Would you mind, you know, um... disposing of it for me?"

Yep. A full grown rabbit. We have quite a few rabbits in the area despite the fact that we live in a residential neighborhood. I'd rather he doesn't kill and eat the bunnies, but somehow it seems less ecologically damaging than eating the birds, and it's easier to clean up.

Just a note: the grass rake doesn't seem to work on bird feathers - they go right through.

The topic of cats leaving their "presents" on the lawn (or, in the case of friends who have a cat door, in the hallway on the way to the bathroom, so you step on them in the middle of the night) came up that week at the pub. I asked the question, "Why is it that cats always eat the heads first?", referring not just to the headless rabbit incident, but virtually any other 4-legged critter he caught. A friend quipped, "Think about it. When we eat our chocolate Easter bunnies, what do we eat first? First we nibble on the ears... then we eat the head..."

Eeeeeewwwww. I think I may never eat another chocolate Easter bunny again.

So my poor guy couldn't go outside for two weeks while the wound healed. (The drainage tube came out in 3 days, and the bandages came off after 10 days, the stitches are due to come out after 14 days). We thought we'd keep him occupied with a video of birds (designed to entertain your cat), but it was more like torture. He sat transfixed under the TV, making strange and unnatural noises in his throat, tail and head twitching like he was possessed. When it looked like he might actually leap up at the TV, we turned it off. We just paid $930 for vet bills, we can't afford a new TV.

It seems that his presence in the neighborhood was missed, if not by the birds, then by the other residents. At one point we got a call from a neighbor on the next block, "We haven't seen Echo lately. Is he ok?" The mooching little tramp! He's been out schmoozing with the neighbors, eating their cat's treats, and rubbing up against their legs and ingratiating himself. I finally had to collar him with a name tag and a note that says, "Please don't feed me. I DO have a home." But people still get suckered in by him. It's clear that more people on my street know my cat's name, than know mine. They probably like him better anyway. He doesn't throw loud parties or clog up the street with guest's cars.

As for the collar, I didn't want him to strangle himself so I made sure it was one of those break-away ones. The beastie kept ditching them. At $9 a pop, I decided it was time for more serious action. On the last collar I put a little aluminum compartment-tube that contains a more detailed note including our address and phone number, and a plea to please send his collar home if it was found. The day before his accident he came home without his collar. Again. But that night, the phone rang and a young voice at the other end said hesitantly, "Do you have a cat... named EK-KO?" The lad was quite proud that he had figured out the secret compartment on the collar and retrieved the message. He was adamant with his parents that HE be the one to call us. He happily delivered the collar to us that evening, and had even rolled up the ET-Phone-Home note and put it back in its compartment.

Echo has one last day before the stitches come out and he can once again go outside. He's making us all crazy. We can hardly wait. The other (mostly "house") cat has had enough of him. He's back to his usual piss and vinegar attitude. No more laps for him. Even finding headless bunnies is better than being attacked on the stairs on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, or being awakened at 3am by the howling of a cat that wants OUT.

As for those extortionist vets, I'm looking into pet insurance for Echo. I just hope the insurance application doesn't ask about his feeding habits...

heartlessly,
-Natalie