Catnaps and Adventures

For the past year the Princess and I have been fostering a 17-year-old cat, named Mabel, who has end-stage cancer and is a little sweetheart. 

A sweetheart in every sense of the word except when it comes to taking medication. 

Mabel does not do pills. Mabel does not do medications that are syrups. Mabel does not do anything that you try to “sneak into her food and/or mouth”.

Mabel is a cat with simple needs: change her water bowl after she drinks from it, clean out her litter box after every usage, answer her cat calls when she yowls, and stay the hell away from her mouth.

Two weeks ago, my unwitting partner forgot how testy our little Mabel could get when she’s trying to give her oral medications. 

The Princess went to open Mabel’s mouth. Mabel got pissed. The Princess got bit.

After washing the wound and putting antibiotic on it, we watched it slowly get swollen and red with the passage of time and decided to call the medical hot-line who advised us to seek immediate medical attention.

We end up in urgent care, get a 10 day prescription of antibiotics and go home only to watch the hand get redder and more swollen. We make another phone call to the medical hotline, get told that it hasn’t even been 24 hours for the antibiotics to start working yet and maybe that’s the problem. 

Go to the doctor if we feel we need to, but maybe give it a bit more time. 

Up to us.

We didn’t wanna seem like we were over reacting, so we went to bed. At 4:30 the next morning, the Princess decided that her hand was not “looking too great”.

Once again, we called the medical hotline and this time we all agree that the situation called for a trip to our local ER thirty minutes away.

I grabbed some blankets (for ME), loaded the Princess and her swollen hand into my car and off to the ER we headed.

After sitting in my car with blankets wrapped around me for 2 hours, the Princess texted me and let me know that she was hooked up to an IV, had had x-rays and blood work done, but that she had no idea when she’d be finished, so for me to go to my morning doctor’s appointment. 

After debating the pros and cons of this, I agreed to it and left.

I go to my appointment and texted the Princess that my apt was finished and that I was on my way to the hospital to pick her up and asked her for a status update.

“Had a Thai tea and doughnut, got bored waiting for you, left hospital and am now on an adventure,” she texted back.

“ADVENTURE?” I wrote back. “And what, pray tell, does that mean?”

“I’m on a bus,” she answered. “Having fun. Have been talking to the bus driver and playing tourist. Will explain everything when u pick me up. Meet me at Home Depot.”

I send her a thumb’s up and headed out to get her.

“So,” I asked after she got into the car, “What’s the status on your hand and how did you end up on a bus?”

“Did you know that you have to PAY to ride the bus?” she answered with no response to how her hand was.

“Yes,” I slowly answered. “And why are you even asking me this? Of course you have to PAY to ride the bus.”

“Well,” she responded. “The bus driver kept looking at me when I got on and asked me if I had a bus pass. I didn’t know what a bus pass was, so he explained and then told me that I could use cash if I didn’t have a pass.”

“Seriously,” I said to her. “You seriously got on the bus and thought that the bus was FREE?”

“As in no money FREE? “

“Yup,” she innocently answered while I shook my head and drove us home.

“More importantly, “ I said to her. “What the heck were you doing on a bus in the middle of a pandemic with an open wound? Why didn’t you wait for me to pick you up?”

“Ya know what,” I continued. 

“Don’t answer that. You’re o.k. I’m o.k. And we both need naps today.”

Life is good, People. Have a great day, and I’ll catch ya the next time, looking at life from my shoes.