No, on Monday, she ran downstairs as fast as she could, with Amanda trailing after her. Upon seeing a dog, she ran back upstairs, unfortunately not into our bedroom. No, she ran into my parents bedroom, where their cat sleeps, nestled up next to my parent's bodies. In she trots, pleased as punch to have found the perfect speed, where Amanda is fingertips away from grabbing her without reaching a full on sprint. She danced along the edge of the bed, gloating over her victory and freedom. That is, until grey cat saw her. Grey cat, who actually never got a name—he's kind of an enigma. One name just doesn't suit him. We tried Hunter, Skuggi (shadow in Icelandic), Vampire Bill (when he sleeps his incisors stick out so he looks like a vampire, and he's kind of emo. Suki!), Beast, Enigma, you name it, so I just think of him as grey cat now, but my parents call him Kitty Boy the Second (KB II)—did not appreciate her little foray onto his bed. Onto his human's bed, no less. So he begins to chase her, using my dad as a springboard to propel himself forward (which is necessary as he's kind of fat), causing my dad to wake up like the plastic game piece in Don't Wake Daddy. And so they tear down the hallway, yeowling, ending their little race under our bed where I am still in a half state of sleep hiding under the blankets as best I can as Amanda left the lights on during this idiocy.
I am stunned to alertness by the fact that a five alarm cat fight is going on under my head under a mattress under a bed spring. It sounds pretty much like your generic cat fight until Bailey's yeowling and growling takes a higher, slighty more blood curdling note than before. I am still sitting in bed shocked. The only thing I could think to do? Start jumping up and down on the bed. Because apparently the imminent threat of my behind crushing the cats through two mattresses will stop them. I wish I could have seen what I looked like, bouncing up and down and screaming at the top of my lungs as Amanda came to the doorway, looked at me and said, "Rachel, really? How is that helping?"
We finally got grey cat out from under the bed with a stick. Why I had a random piece of wood sitting around in my bedroom, I don't know, but thank God it was there. Amanda left the room, and I attempted to coax the cat out from under the bed. This is when I noticed her paw was bleeding.
Now, I should preface by saying that once she came out from under the bed she was all too happy to take a treat and walk around, shaken, but not too worried about life, and not treating that paw any differently.
But I get owning a cat is a lot like having a child. Especially with Bailey. She acts like a baby. She likes to be held almost constantly. She talks to us even though we don't understand her. She likes to put things she shouldn't inside her mouth. She is constantly getting herself into trouble and is only too happy to be "saved" by one of us. She doesn't really have a sense of balance and falls over a lot. And she refuses to cover her own poop so we have to bury it for her. The silver lining in all of this is we get to keep a permanent baby who will never learn the language to talk back and we won't have to put through college, just buy the occasional bag of Greenies for.
Anyway, I saw the blood and freaked out. I can't really explain the emotion I felt when I saw her injury. Some mix of disgust with sadness and shock and righteous anger and vengefulness complemented with tenderness and deep concern for her as well as anger at myself and general helplessness and ineptitude. I guess that's what being a parent and seeing your child unwell is like. I just knew something wasn't right, I couldn't do anything about it myself, but we needed to find someone who could. I called for Amanda, and convinced myself that we had to take her to the vets. I was hysterical. I'm sure being woken up at 6:45 by a cat fight after five or so hours of sleep didn't help, but I was crying followed by manic laughter followed by blaming myself for Bailey escaping because I got mad at her for chewing my book jacket—a real hot mess. Amanda, bless her heart, agreed to go to the 24 hour vet clinic with me and be late for work. So off we go on our crazy adventure into rootin' tootin' Newton.
We get to the vets office and it looks closed. I get out in the grey early morning drizzle and check, not seeing a bolt or latch between the metal and sheet glass doors, I go and open the door for Amanda and pull the kennel out. We open the doors and are immediately hit in the face with the overwhelming scent of fresh and stale dog urine. A look at the door mat confirms the presence of both. A man, in far worse condition than either of us sits in one of the three old pleather wrapped metal framed chairs, checking his phone sporadically. There is an animal cage of some kind left empty on top of one of many filing cabinets; it does not bode well. After what feels like a half hour, a man wearing a lab coat and the same Sandals my dad likes to wear around the house comes out.
"Are you together?" he asks with a thick accent and gestures towards the man.
"No," we respond.
"Have you been before?"
"No."
"Ok." He places a pen on top of a clipboard filled with blank sheets.
"You want me to fill this out?"
"Jes. I come back, you done. What is problem?"
"Our cat has a cut on it's paw." He looks pained. There has been a dog screaming and barking non-stop since we arrived. It sounds part hound as its please almost turn into yodeling when he gets particularly upset. Our "emergency" pales in comparison to what his night was surely filled with. He leaves.
I hate filling in paper work. I always fuck something simple up. The first time I took Bailey to the vets I out her date of birth as the day we got her, which is what the SPCA wrote on her files. The vet looked at this and said "Uh, date of birth says Nov. 16 2010. That would make her three days old, and she is obviously more than three days old." That vet visit was also a nightmare, but it's a story unto itself. This time I just write 2007. After what feels like an hour, he returns and checks the paper work.
He asks again, "O-k. And what was wrong? She is throwing up?"
"No she has a cut on her paw. The other cat she lives with attacked her and we wanted to make sure it wasn't worse than it seemed."
I guess this explanation made our situation seem slightly less ridiculous as he softened and reassured, "It is good to double check—be safe. She is spayed?"
"Yes."
"Ok. You go to waiting room B."
At first I am excited to get into a room, to feel like some progress is being made, like this nightmare is closer to being over. Until I inhaled. The smell of urine from before is amplified by ten, like the tiles were grouted with excretory materials. The room is small with one chair and nowhere that feels clean enough to put anything down. The smell makes my nose feel warm and makes me feel nauseous. We wait for what feels like another eternity. We hear people enter the building, starting their shift, figuring what area they work in that day. A short woman with long, pierced earlobes and a white coat walks in.
"Ok, hi. So Bailey, jes? You take out." I open the cat carrier. "Her paw, jes?"
"Yes." Bailey, obviously very hurt was running around the room, smelling and investigating.
"She seem ok, she is very active," the vet said. "Can you hold?"
The only time someone has ever asked me to "hold" like that before was at a salon while getting my eyebrows threaded. It made me a little more nervous, if that is possible. We attempted to hold her on the table like a normal cat, but she was having none of it. The entire vet visit was conducted with her clinging to Amanda's shoulder, her favourite place on earth, I think, we me occasionally steadying her head so she couldn't bite the vet. The best part of the whole visit was when the vet wanted to shave her paw to clean the wound better. Great idea in theory, but the second the clippers were turned on she practically vaulted for the ceiling from Amanda's shoulder. Again, clearly disabled from her injuries. We managed to get the wound cleaned, a bandage put on, and an injection of antibiotics into her.
I don't know if you've ever seen a cat with a bandaged foot before, but beyond the horror of your beloved pet looking like s/he belongs on one of those sad, late night, Sarah McLaughlin, donate to the BC SPCA commercials, it is hilarious. As soon as the vet left the room to go get the antibiotics, she tried to shake it off. If you've ever seen an animal try to shake water or something off of their paw, but they shake it like a polaroid picture so to speak. So here's Bailey, still on Amanda's shoulder, trying to shake off this bandage that makes her paw kind of like a little tiny hand in a boxing glove, whapping Amanda in the side of the head like a cartoon kangaroo, setting her Pork-Pie hat askew. Twice.
Anyway, after the madness, we shove her back into the kennel (easier than trying to get her there) and go out to pay for the visit, hoping to God it doesn't put us in the poor house. We leave the room to watch the man from the waiting room being told that the dog he came in with will be returned to him in an urn, wrapped in paw-printed cello-paper in a little twine handled paper bag—the worst gift you could ever receive. Definitely a humbling reminder that it could have been a lot worse. From his conversation with them at the desk, we learn that it wasn't his dog, but a friends who was away for the weekend that he was looking after. I don't know which is worse: loosing your pet while away, or having to make the decision to euthanize a friend's pet as an act of mercy. Ugh. In better news the bill was less than a hundred dollars with medicine and tax included, so really it was reasonable. And honestly they were very good. They were patient with us and our crazy cat who insisted on being on Amanda's shoulder the entire time and our grave concern over a 4 mm long cut that the cat didn't care about. They operate an emergency clinic, not a posh office and they do a good job. I make the situation sound grim, but I would go back, urine and all.
She did pull the $20.00 dollar bandage off during the car ride home, though. And she has been fine since, and her paw seems to be healing well and isn't giving her any trouble. The whole situation just left me feeling defeated. My financial/job issues were still very unresolved (they still are, but they will be fixed tomorrow), my cat was injured, I felt like I had failed to keep her safe (I've always been completely paranoid that something bad might happen to her, I don't know why. I wonder about her when I'm out and hope that she's all right and worry that something outside of my control will happen. I told Amanda while driving her to work that if she could make enough money for me to stay home, write brilliant essays and stories and what have you but otherwise be a stay at home cat mom, I would), I felt like we would never get the two cats socialized and that this whole moving to my parents house was a terrible idea, that grey cat would try to kill our cat—that it was beyond hope and repair. That my life was beyond hope and repair. I cried for the majority of the drive home from Amanda's work, my misery compounded by a trojan-y type Email from a friend that said there was "a real bad blog about me someplace". Monday had won. After I got home I did not leave the house. I couldn't possible face the world, especially not after the bad news another friend delivered.
Tuesday left me frustrated as well, but for no particular reason other than it came after Monday.
Wednesday happened, and I felt better, but still unsettled by the cats. My OCD around making sure "everything is ok" before I leave the house got to the point where I was (and I still am because this is fresh in my mind) just standing outside the bedroom door, pushing on it repeatedly to try to convince myself that there was no way a freak accident could happen and grey cat could get the door open and kill Bailey while I was gone. I went to class and returned home, excited to have the afternoon and evening to myself with the cat and dogs and the other cat, but separately. And so I spent the day in pyjamas, hair unwashed (I wore a hat in public, not that that makes it any better), just hanging out with the cats and the Golden Girls. So help me, when Betty White dies, I am going to get a memorial tattoo to the Golden Girls, for all the sad times they've helped me through. During this, I got a text letting me know that a good friend was in fact not dying, but was officially in remission. I don't think I had really admitted to myself how upsetting the potential diagnosis could have been, but afterwards I felt a bit renewed and lighter. Until, the cats saw each other through the window and Bailey just seemed upset and miserable and grey cat looked like he wanted to attack her, so it only served to remind me that all was unwell on the homefront. Then I made the mistake of watching the news. Bad idea. Wednesday afternoon was beginning to feel a lot like Monday, despite how good it felt to know my friend got to have a second chance and that I didn't have to lose her.
Later, I ended up on the computer. The computer room is Bailey's favourite room because there is lots of shelving with boxes of things and lots of dark corners and places to climb up and hide in on and at. She constantly disappears and then reappears, covered in cobwebs, pleased as punch to have discovered a new dark crevice. After tiring of adventuring, she decided my lap was a good place to curl up in while I watched New Girl. After a while, Brandy walked around the corner, looking at the cat, stepping gingerly, but wagging her tail. I assumed the cat would want to be left alone so told Brandy to go, and she did, begrudgingly. Up until then, Bailey had been put off by Brandy's strange stalking followed by wagging and had tried to hide from her and avoid her at all costs.
I should tell you that Brandy has a difficult relationship with cats. She loves them. She loves all small animals, but especially cats. If you say "Brandy, where's the kitty?!" she perks up and starts wagging her tail and scanning the room excitedly. The problem is she doesn't get the whole... big dog, small cat thing. And she likes to chase small animals. Not in a prey kind of way, but it looks like it when she's doing it. She just chases them, and then once she catches up she doesn't really know what to do with herself and acts sheepish and wags her tail a lot and looks away, making hurried glances back in her new friend's direction, trying to sneak a sniff in without getting her nose batted at. If that happens, she looks kind of confused and hurt and half backs, half dances away, wanting to come back but not sure if she should. When the crazy cat fight was in progress/slightly after, she was sitting outside the bedroom door politely (I never used to let animals in my room before this whole move in thing so she likes to sit at my door until someone pays attention to her but doesn't like to enter the room) but looking very concerned, trying to see around the door and under the bed to make sure this new little thing that had entered her life was ok. I didn't see this, but Amanda did and told me about it after I related this next bit to her.
After Brandy started to retreat from the room, Bailey crawled off my lap and climbed through the shelving next to the desk and meowed at Brandy, kind of like she meows at us. I couldn't see either of them anymore, but neither returned so I assumed they were both out in the living room or kitchen where my mom was. I thought it was strange, but I didn't think much more of it. A little while later, my mom came in the room to report to me that Bailey had just walked up to Brandy and rubbed herself all against her legs, practically on her face. Finally, finally, finally, something clicked. Finally I felt like "we" as a family unit were accepted into the fold. It wasn't perfect, but it was a step forward when everything else had felt like a step back. And seeing Bailey's behaviour change was a relief too. Instead of skirting around the house, pausing to focus herself to jump over and run away from the dogs, she started to trot around and really enjoy exploring, finding new places, but fearless enough to actually sit on the furniture in plain view. Everything seemed to switch from black and white to technicolour.
I guess life is funny like that. Just when you give up hope, it reminds you that the world is, in fact, a very nice place to be, and that it is filled with abundance and potential. In AA, people say you have to hit rock bottom before you can begin to get better. Maybe you have to hit your rock bottom in a given situation in order to really appreciate the good things that life has to give. Either way, I'm grateful that things are going better, and as fucked up as things seem to be sometimes, and will probably get in the future, the good news is that all the shit really does, as my Amma always said "come out in the wash". Things are getting better. I'm excited for all the potential the present has and that the future promises.
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