While the pernickety old woman pruned the rosebush in the front yard, a cheeky tom pranced along our back fence. I streaked over there, intending to see him off! I ran up the fence, made to dance along the top, thinking to tip the top crossbar every couple of paces with my right side foot and paw. For balance.
I was stuck! My rear claw too deep in the soft old timber! I wrenched and jerked to get free, tore my toe almost from my foot. Hurt! Hurt!
I miaowed and wailed and screamed for help. “Hurt! Tearing! My foot!”
My human came running. “What are you doing? What are you doing?”
“Oh no!” she said. “I’ll have to cut you loose and there’s blood already!”
“Hang on!” She pulled my leg back at the same time as snipping my claw through with the secateurs.
I screeched, would’ve jumped down and run, but she gripped me by the scruff of my neck. She moved me onto her shoulder and kneeled down to where she’d dropped her gardening apron. Moved me onto that and had me rolled up in it in a flash.
“Phew!” she said. Got to her feet. “I know I can’t trust you not to get free so you’ll have to come.” She took me into the garage. “We’re looking for the cat carrier. Give me a nudge when you see it.”
Me give her a nudge? I hate the cat carrier!
“Found it! Don’t move now!” She lay me on the work bench and slid the cat carrier out from under it. “It’s dusty! Where’s a rag?”
I wrenched and wriggled. Just about got myself free when she grabbed me and fed me into the cat carrier.
Yowling, I hung onto the doorway as usual but my heart wasn’t in the struggle. I smelled my blood. I wanted to be licking my foot. Let myself be pushed in.
She shut the little gate and barred it. “Well, let me think,” she said. “I doubt that I can carry you—carrier and all—all the way to the vet.”
I pressed into the back of the carrier. Really not interested. Found my wound and started licking.
The pernickety old woman went to the garden shed. Got out the wheelbarrow and lifted the carrier onto it. Trundled me down the drive, left turn into the street, across the road. Another left turn and a couple of blocks along. Right turn into the bad place.
I yowled. Felt sick. The turns and trundles dizzy-making. Give me peace and quiet. I don’t like it at the vet’s. They have pointy things they stick into me. They have rules. Dogs on their leashes, cats in their carriers. I wailed as the pernickety old woman carried me into the waiting room.
“Oh dear,” the secretary said while I took a breath. “Bleeding?”
“Yes, quite a bit of the red stuff,” the pernickety old woman said. She explained what she thought had happened.
“Come through,” one of the vet nurses said.
My human picked up the carrier and we went into the scary place.
————
Yes. They stuck me with something. I spent the night. Refused their food. In the morning, I was bandaged up. When we got home, the carrier and the wheelbarrow again, my human locked me in the shed. “Go to sleep,” she said. “They said you would want to. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
Rita de Heer 