SPAY DAY

The vet, Dr. Yuri, and Valeria, his wife, collected Crooky Sunday morning and took her to a colleague for spaying. They brought her back last night.

I was a little bit, but only slightly, sorry to have her neutered right now as I finally hit on the perfect Cat In Heat soundtrack . . . the first 20 seconds of Freddie Mercury singing "Somebody to Love." Studio version. Not live. It's impossible to find on YouTube.

Hey . . . anybody??? Find me . . . . somebody to-oo love?

Since a more realistic soundtrack to our lives is SpongeBob, the children skipped home from school yesterday singing "Crooky's coming, tonight-tonight! Crooky's coming tonight!"

Valeria called me around 9:00 p.m. to ask how late we'd be up, and if we preferred them to return the cat then or in the morning.

"She's at our place. We're on our way home now," she said. "With traffic it could be another hour."

Huh?

She's been convalescing in their apartment? Which is in the same building as ours?

I suppose it doesn't really matter. And it certainly would keep Cat-O from trying to play with her right away.

Now, it has been ages since I've owned a cat, let alone a female cat. So it has been, oh, maybe 25 years since I've had one spayed.

But I don't recall them ever coming back from the vet quite like this:


(Don't you be passing judgement on all those empty wine bottles behind her . . . we did have folks over on Saturday.)


Isn't that a riot? I guess it beats the plastic cone over the head. She looks like Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy in her little get-up.Cat-O was extra affectionate to us while she was gone. I'm not sure if he was worried about her or just realized it was his opportunity to bogart all the cat food. He has been slimmer.

This morning I discovered this peaceable kingdom tableau in the living room:

The minute I approached with the camera, Cat-O tried to look disinterested.

The vet's instructions are that she is to wear the "dressing" for a week. They will return in two weeks to remove the stitches.

Seems like a long time.

All of which got me to thinking: if I have heard horror stories about Russian public hospitals, what must a Russian vet clinic look like?

Shudders.

I am reminded of a story. If I've bored you with this before, you can stop reading now.

A million years ago, before we had children, we lived in Miami, and I worked for an HMO. My boss was a very funny gay man who owned what seemed like a million cats. It being Florida, most of the cats could live outside. So he wasn't like a Crazy Gay Cat Man or anything. But he did have a soft spot, and he was known to rescue strays now and then and add them to his posse.

To economize, he had all their medical work done at his local Humane Society. They spay and neuter at a fraction of the cost of a regular vet's office.

The vet at this particular Humane Society clinic was Russian. I never met the guy, but I imagine a big, burly Russian. Like a farm vet. With big, muscle-y arms.

Boss tells the story of how once he walked into the clinic to retrieve a cat who had been a patient there for something or another.

Dr. Ivan calls from the OR for him to "Come on in."

Boss does, only to find Ivan, mid-surgical procedure, with a cigarette dangling from his lips. The ash on the end was long and in imminent danger of falling into the unfortunate patient, etherized on the table.

"Um," said Boss, himself a smoker. "Do you think you should be smoking . . . er . . . now?"

"Meh," replied the Russian, stoically. "Cats die. People die."

The washing machine has begun to leak again, and Washer Repair Dude III is due this morning. Light a candle for me, will ya? I forsee a new washer/dryer in my future.