The Time I Had To Perform (Amateur)Veterinary Medicine

I love my cat but he is an asshole. That is not a debatable fact. 

I found him when he was a tiny kitten under the trailer at our deer lease. My dad had been keeping him alive by feeding him a diet of leftover jalapeno sausage and whatever extra deer parts weren’t going to the processing plant. I have never met a cat I didn’t want to befriend, so when my dad said, “That cat is not going to let you pet it,” I took it as a personal challenge. 

When my dad came out of the trailer, I had the tiny kitten in my lap, petting it. 

“Ugh. Do not tell your mother about this. We do not need another cat,” he said. 

We went home and I could not stop thinking about that little kitten, alone in a country landscape full of coyotes and owls and all sorts of other creatures that would view him as a light snack.  

A couple days later, I set off on my own down the wildly confusing trail of country roads that would lead me back to that little orange kitten I had befriended days earlier. After more than a few wrong turns, I found our trailer and sought the tiny kitty. I got out of the car and did a few, “ps ps pses” and he came a runnin’. I scooped him up and threw him into my Chevy Malibu. At which point he absolutely LOST. HIS. SHIT. 

Having been confined for the first time in his young life, he launched himself violently from the front seat against the passenger window, the front windshield, the back windshield, all the while screaming tiny cat screams. 

I called my ex-boyfriend (who is now, many years later,  my husband and this cat’s legal father) and I was like, “I may have made a huge mistake. This cat does not seem to want to come home with me.”

“Just get him in the car, bring him home and he’ll be fine,” he said. He is the product of a mother who never met a feral cat she couldn’t befriend and once helped one give birth in her garage. 

I embarked on the two-hour journey home with an absolute banshee of a kitten who alternated between hiding under the passenger seat and randomly launching himself about the vehicle. 

Like most decisions in my life, I had not fully thought this through, so I had to stop on the way home to go to PetsMart (or PetCo? They’re pretty much the same thing, right?) in order to buy cat food, cat litter and a box for this tiny demon I had forced to live with me forever.

I got this tiny furball home, scooped him out of my sedan and introduced him to my (in his mind) palatial home. 

“You’re home, bud! Isn’t it great here?” I exclaimed. 

He hissed an angry response. 

I called my ex-boyfriend. 

“This cat hates me. He’s miserable. I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you want me to come over?” 

“Yes, I think so.”

He arrives and the kitten is cowering under the dining room table wanting absolutely nothing to do with me.  He comes over and the freaking cat-whisperer gets this feral asshole to come right to him!

“I don’t think I like you.”

He’s just nonchalantly petting the cat and says, “I think you guys will be fine. He’s a good dude.” 

I’m finally getting to the point of this story and I’m going to need to fast forward about 11 years now. 

I got back together with the ex-boyfriend, married him, had a human baby, yadda yadda yadda… We obviously still have the cat. 

And he hates everyone except my husband and me. He will run and hide when the Amazon guy knocks on the door. If my dad (who was instrumental in keeping his ass alive as a baby) rolls up on the Gator (for those non-country people that is an ATV we use to get around our property) he high-tails it under the bed. When we have company, they can’t even tell we have a pet. He’s not a friendly dude. For god’s sake, we have a five year old daughter and I don’t think they’ve been in the same room together for more than 30 seconds. 

I’m not a totally negligent cat mom, so I have taken him to the vet a few times over the last decade or so. The experience is so traumatic, it’s generally not worth it. He screams. He bites, He scratches. He doesn’t want to go in the carrier, and once he does, he takes a giant “screw you” dump once I shut the door. 

 He doesn’t go outside, he doesn’t come in contact with other animals, he’s been generally healthy… So when the vet calls every year and says he’s due for his shots, I tell her, “Thanks but no thanks.”

Then he got a hematoma on his ear. It was a big, swollen spot that was clearly noticeable and (assumedly) painful. I knew I had to take him to the vet. I also knew this would not be an easy task. 

Remi with his perfectly normal ear

After a few failed attempts (and some light bleeding on my part), I finally got the cat in the carrier.  I deposited the angry, hissing pet at the vet and sat down in the waiting room.  A few minutes later, the vet asks me to step in to the exam room. 

I fear the worst. Fatal ear cancer. Some kind of flesh eating disease. 

“I can’t actually treat him,” the vet said, handing me back my angry pet, still in his carrier.

“Why is that?” I asked. 

“Well, when we attempted to get him out of the carrier, he bit the vet tech. We can’t treat a pet that bites.”

“I get that. So what now?” I asked. 

“Well, he probably doesn’t need surgery, just medicine. I can give you the medicine and you can put it in his ear yourself.”

“O…K… I guess I can do that. I mean, if you can’t treat him.”

“I can’t. But I can give you some strong sedatives to give him prior to the next time you bring him in. Or to give him if you want to trim his toenails or give him a bath!” 

“Super. But I’ve gotten those before and the pills are useless because I’m absolutely not going to shove a pill down his angry mouth. Do you have it in liquid form?”

“Absolutely. I get it. Here’s the meds.”

I did my absolute best to put that freakin medicine in his ear. And I gave him the oral antibiotics.  He hated me for it so much. I thought that I got most of the medicine in his ear and in his angry mouth. I donned a pair of oven mitts, a sweatshirt and got my husband’s help. I tried.

But I am not a professional veterinarian. And I obviously didn’t do it well, because he still has a wonky ear.

Still cute tho.