Post-Op Procedure

I could never be a veterinarian. Doctors have the luxury of patients that can tell them when it hurts. Animals will ignore the pain, spit out the medicine, growl. It takes a special hand to feel what is happening beneath the fur, treat without ever really knowing how the patient is reacting.

My cat must think this is some cruel torture. He is sent off into the hands of strangers in strange smelling rooms, cold and clinical. They poke and prod him. Then everything just disappears for awhile.

When he wakes up, he finds his carefully groomed coat half gone, his face imprisoned in a plastic prison, a drain poked through the lengthy cut in his newly exposed skin, held together by stitches and medical glue.

When he's finally returned to the incompetent but loving hands of his primary caregivers, they keep him contained in a cage where he thrashes about in confusion from the anesthesia and experience. Deprived of his freedom, body, and routine, he does not understand these sacrifices are made for a greater good. He simply must trust.

I have to pity the sad creature sleeping on the floor in front of me. The ends of the drain poking out from his purplish smooth skin raise up and down with each rhythmic breath. He lays his head awkwardly to limit contact between his ears and whiskers and the cone. He licks the tip of his tail and the ends of his paws; they're all he can reach, but he's desperate for the comfort of the familiar action.

Yet he sticks his head out so I can pet his forehead beneath the cone, scratch where it's tied around his neck. Though we've put him through his awful ordeal, he trusts. After all, we have the food.

For the Love of a Cat

People have always had pets. I don't know what it is about them that makes us need them so. Why do we want to reign in wild creatures for our own personal satisfaction?

I guess it makes sense. It gives us a (sometimes false) sense of superiority and we like having something dependant on us.

Pets' love sure does seem unconditional. No matter what I put my cat through, he still looks at me with such adoration and trust. Even that one time he ended up on the pool steps, or after a particularly traumatizing trip to the vet...

Like today. This weird black dot developed in his eye awhile back, a few months, and we should've taken him sooner. But we brushed it off as something trivial that would go away on its own. It didn't. We took him today because his face had started to swell and emit puss. Yeah, gross.

Turns out it's a tumor and has to be removed. This requires taking him to a specialist in Greensboro, a lot of money, surgery, and possibly the loss of his eye. Dad's not going to want to pay for it; the poor thing might lose his eye. I feel horribly guilty for not taking him sooner, but it would probably have the same diagnosis anyway. I gave him way too many treats when we got home anyway, as if the things could make up for possible loss of half your senses.

The thing that kills me is he still looks at me with those trusting eyes, around the tumor. I just know it would kill me for him to only be able to look at me with one eye.

I could never have children. If I'm this attached to a pet, if his injuries upset me so much, what would I do if it were my child?? I know I'm far from the only person this attached to their pets, but that doesn't make it suck less. I love that cat more than the majority of people. After all, people's love isn't nearly as unconditional as his, nor their trust as enduring, or as innocent.

I can't even write anymore about it; it just makes me too sad to think about. I'm so sorry, my dear cat.