Over vigorous stroking
Last night we took Cleo to the vets. This is a new experience for me, as I've never had to care for an animal before, and certainly never had to take them to see a trained professional.

I suppose my visions of vets surgeries have been coloured by my parents watching of All Creatures Great and Small when I was young, and imagine that all vets do is spend their days shoulder deep in cow and driving round the Yorkshire Countryside.

Obviously this is wholly impractical for our urban vet, particularly as we don't live in Yorkshire.

Having finally coaxed her into her cat box, through a mixture of subterfuge and pushing, we take the cat to the vets, and register on arrival. Foolishly, we give the vet our name to show we have an appointment, only for the vet to ask if the appointment is for Cleo.

I resist the temptation to reply with a smart-arsed comment for fear or finding my sphincter stretched by a vet who doesn't have a sense of humour shouting "Who's laughing now, bitch?"

Finally we are called into the surgery, and Cleo gets to run round the room, looking for nooks and crannies to hide in. Sadly the place has been designed to prevent this, and Cleo is forced to confront the slightly funny looking man who purports to know how to fix broken creatures.

Despite clearly being somewhat unnerved by his over vigorous stroking technique, the cat dutifully sits while he injects her against all manner of unpleasantness and shoves a pill down her throat.

At which point we are finished. Cleo decides that she'd rather spend time in her cat basket than let the vet stroke her again, and makes a mockery of my earlier struggle to get her in the box by charging straight in, presumably to get out of harms' way.

We pay the massive vet bill and head home – amused by the thought that of the three of us, only our cat is registered with a healthcare professional in the area.
- posted by Paul @ 11:42 am