Oct 04 2007
Surprise, Surprise
The kitten formerly known as Dennis
Well, it’s just been one thing after another since I got back from Detroit.
One thing:
The $350 vet bill.
Rita lives to sniff things, and it looked like she might have sniffed the wrong thing. She and my kind neighbor Charlie were enjoying each other’s company while I was enjoying Kathleen’s company in Detroit. The enjoyment came to a rapid and horrifying halt when Charlie noticed Rita investigating some mouse bait which he had overlooked in his kitchen.
Of course, this occurred on a Saturday evening, so he had to take Her Loveliness to the emergency vet, which is much more expensive (but not more luxurious) than the regular vet. While Charlie imagined how he was going to tell me about this, Rita had her stomach pumped twice, and even though it didn’t look like she had ingested any poison pellets, they gave her Vitamin K just in case*. I’m not sure who had the worse time. But Rita is healthy and happy, unlike our collective bank accounts.
Another:
A couple of days later, at a different (and slightly less expensive) office down the street, I learned that Dennis is, in fact, a girl. Apparently everyone who saw Dennis from Day One onwards had the same hallucination, including the vet, because no-one noticed the whole “Dude Is a Lady” thing on the first visit. This time, the vet got a second opinion from her partner, and said they’ll check again on the next appointment (kittens go to the vet approximately as often as Lindsay Lohan goes to rehab), so stay tuned.
Years of living in San Francisco and walking to work through the Tenderloin in the early morning hours has given me a remarkable ability to tell when a girl is really a guy, but not, apparently, the other way around.
*I learned far too much about how mouse poison really works. I’d stay in ignorance if I were you. ~shudder~
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