Going to the Vet

The Tanner household has some interest in adopting another cat now that our beloved Yara has passed into to the great beyond.

The qualifications for leaving the Iowa City animal shelter with a kitten aren’t all that rigorous. Can you spell your name? I sure can. Do you have a place to live? Yes, I do. Do you know how to breathe? Very well, thank you. Pretty easy stuff. But they do demand that, if you already own an animal, you must provide documentation for their Rabies vaccine.

I’m afraid, dear reader, that our cat Theo hasn’t been back to the vet since his man parts were mutilated back in Pennsylvania. Is he healthy? Are you healthy? Am I healthy? Who knows. I’m healthy enough to have just written the phrase “man parts were mutilated” in this blog. And Theo is healthy enough to wake me up at two in the morning to feed him.

I can’t imagine Theo is all that excited to go to the vet to get a shot. And I don’t know how excited I am to clean up after another cat. I’ve been tending to multiple cats for nearly fifteen years at this point. A man servant? No, a cat servant.

“Can I scoop up more of your urine, sir?”

Theo stares at me vacantly.

***

“What’s Rabies, Dad?” my son Solomon asked when he learned Theo had to get a Rabies shot.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It makes animals crazy.”

I’m no doctor. But I am an English teacher. Rabies makes me think of To Kill a Mockingbird. I taught that book a lot. To 9th graders. Too much, if you ask me. There’s a scene where a mad dog comes shuffling down the road. Ambling might be the adjective that the venerable Harper Lee used. The dog was shuffling or ambling near the Finch household, if I remember. Foaming at the mouth. Young Scout watches as her father Atticus calmly retrieves his rifle and blows the dog away. Goodnight, sweet prince.

“What would happen if Theo got rabies?” Solomon asked. Solomon’s mind always worries about the worst-case scenario. A chip off the old block.

“I’d blow him away with a rifle,” I said.

“Stop,” my wife Katie said. “Daddy wouldn’t do that.”

My wife Katie often clarifies my sarcastic answers to my sons. I think I’ve lost all credibility as a reliable narrator with them. Maybe with you too, if you’ve spent any time with these blogs.

“We’d take Theo to the vet if he had rabies,” Katie clarified. “But he’s not going to have rabies.”

Maybe. We’ll see after we leave the vet.

***

“Do you think Theo has high blood pressure like you?” my other son Samson asked after learning that Theo was going to vet.

“No, but his tail pressure is probably pretty bad.”

“Is that true?” Samson asked Katie. That’s what Samson asks Katie when I say something stupid. Just to make sure.

“No,” Katie said. “It is isn’t.”

“He does have a big belly like you, Dad,” Samson said.

Thanks.

Samson does a pretty good impression of me. He sticks his belly out, starts talking too loudly, and complains about his blood pressure being 375/290. His impression is spot on.

Theo is not in the best of shape. I think his belly is larger than mine, thank you very much. I hope he doesn’t have white coat syndrome like me. I fear that he might. He got skittish the moment I took the cat carrier out of the garage. I get skittish the minute they strap me up to take my blood pressure. Peas in a pod.

What is Theo’s reward for his visit to the vet? For the shot he’s about to get? A new kitten friend that he very much doesn’t want. It’s hard to be a Theo. It’s hard to be a Sam. Is it hard to be you, dear reader? I don’t know. I do know that it sure can feel hard to be alive sometimes. Rabies, man parts being mutilated, high blood pressure, teaching To Kill a Mockingbird to 9th graders. It’s always something. Still, those somethings usually don’t amount to much. In the words of the great Tom Petty on one of my favorite songs on his album Wildflowers: “Most of the things I worry about never happen anyway.”

That’s a good reminder. Most things I worry about never happen anyway. Theo will be fine, even if going to the vet sucks.