Feline adventures

[mamajoan]

Last week I took my cat, Grover, to be neutered -- long overdue, since we've had him for almost 3 years now. A combination of lack of funds and lack of getting-around-to-it-ness had kept it from happening sooner. Well, and there was also lack of urgency as a factor, since Grover doesn't go out and thus has no opportunity to encounter girl kitties (with one exception as noted below), and *knock wood* had never seemed to exhibit the tendency of many unneutered males to pee everywhere.

But then my upstairs neighbor Charles let me know that he'd had to put his kitty to sleep because she turned out to have feline leukemia. Charles occasionally had let her into the basement, and Grover occasionally goes there too, so there was a small chance they could have encountered each other down there. I knew that Melita was fixed, so I never worried about it from that point of view.

Anyway, the odds of Grover having been infected by Melita were very small, but I figured it was as good an impetus as any to finally get him to the vet for his shots, general checkup, neutering, and the FeLeuk test.

So I took him in the Friday before last for the preliminary checkup. At the last minute, I discovered that my cat carrier had gone missing (still not sure what happened to it) so I had to stuff Grover into a cardboard box for the fortunately short drive to the vet. It was easy to get him into the box because he had no idea what was coming. ;) I just put the box down next to him, and he was all "what's all this then?" and I scooped him up and plopped him into it and taped it shut. I didn't use enough duct-tape, because halfway there his nose started poking out, so I drove the rest of the way with one hand holding the top of the box shut. LOL. I felt kind of embarrassed walking into the vet office with my cardboard box. ;) The receptionist was like, "why don't we give you a real carrier to get him home" and brought out one of those sturdy cardboard things that open on the top.

Anyway, Grover was fine chillin' on the exam table until the vet came in and tried to look in his ears. Then he freaked out, the end result being Grover hiding under a bench while the three of us -- the vet, the big burly veterinary nurse, and me -- tried to coax him out with a wide variety of kitty treats. Nothing worked, so finally the nurse just moved the bench aside and we managed at last to stuff him into the cardboard carrier for the ride home. Phew!

Then I borrowed a better carrier from mom for the "real" visit, which was last Thursday. I was supposed to bring him in at 8:30, so I got the kids all ready, and then prepared to put Grover in the new carrier. I was ready for it to take a while (I remember with my old cat, Bini, I used to have to plan at least 15 extra minutes for wrestling him into the carrier) but again it was easy because Grover didn't know what was coming. He was famished, because they had told me not to let him eat all night in preparation for the neutering. He just could not understand why I wouldn't take his very obvious hints to feed him. So when I called to him, he came running over, and I just quickly pushed him into the carrier and zipped it up. The kids were VERY interested in this whole process. ;) Then we put us all into the car, dropped off Isaac, and took Grover to the vet, which did I mention is just a few houses over from Ruthie's preschool. Ruthie was very interested to look around the vet office, and then we went to get her stuff from the car and she had a massive nosebleed in the parking lot, which reminds me that now I need to wash her coat. *Facepalm*

Then I left work a little early that afternoon and picked up the kids and we went over to retrieve the cat. He did fine with the neutering, and was FeLeuk-negative, hooray. They told us to put him in a separate room and leave him alone, since most/many cats just want to be left alone while recovering; but when we got him home and left him in my bedroom, he came right out to the kitchen to check on us. He was still woozy from the sedatives and couldn't quite walk straight. He tried to jump up onto the kitchen counter and couldn't make it and fell down, which was one of those things where you feel terrible for laughing but you can't help it. ;) But by the next morning he was pretty much back to usual.

I really like the new vet office that I switched to after getting dissatisfied with the old one. For one thing, the location right nearby Ruthie's preschool is very convenient. For another, it's a nice old building that is not at all far removed from having been someone's home in the past. And all the people I dealt with there so far -- the vet, two nurses, and two receptionists -- were women, and all very friendly and competent. So far, so good. And here's hoping that it'll be a year until we have to go back ;) and that by then Grover will have forgotten that he has good reason to hate the cat-carrier. ;)

Comments

[dchenes.livejournal.com]

My bathroom is long and fairly narrow. After Snip's emergency surgery, she had to wear a lampshade, and she was on pain meds that made her loopy. Since she couldn't tell where the walls were, she would walk up the bathroom backward, in circles, until she got to the threshold. I was very guiltily amused.

[azurelunatic]

Sweet trusting Grover! I'm glad all went well!