More pet silliness

Tippy ponders the meaning of life from inside the box

You may know that Paul and I are quite silly over our pets. Gaga some might say. One of my daughter's-in-law calls me the crazy cat lady. Oh snap.

The crazy cat man and I had to take the wild young cats to the vet, as they had not had their shots. They got rabies shots when they were neutered, but not leukemia and distemper and so forth. As you may recall, if you've been paying attention, these are formerly feral cats who are strongly opposed to getting into a box and taking a car ride to hell. Tux has drawn blood a few times, and we had a horrible experience with him in the laundry room where he resisted our efforts to touch him by climbing right up the wall. I still shudder when I think of it.

We were very worried about how we were going to get not one but two crazy cats into the carrier. We plotted strategy. We discussed different clothing options: oven mitts, oilskin coat, double sweatshirts with hoods. The vet advised leaving the cat carrier out in advance where they could see it, which I did, and I also put some cat food in there. Tippy would rush into a burning building if she thought there was a snack; Tux was the real problem.

On the day of the planned capture, I got up early and put the carrier in the middle of the den. I fed them only a tiny amount at about 5:30. At 7:30 I sat down on the sofa near the carrier to read the paper. They were hungry by now and came to see why I wasn't feeding them. I thought why not put a dish of food in there. I did and Tippy hopped right in. Tux looked over the edge. I observed this from the sofa anxiously. Tux then put his front feet up, then hopped up as I rose slowly from the sofa. When his whole body was in the carrier, I slammed the top down and closed the latch. My heart was racing. They scuffled and growled a bit. I ran upstairs to tell Paul. "They're in, they're in!". He was asleep. I didn't care, I was so excited. Only 2 hours till their appointment. No sweat.

I called the vet at 8 and told the nice person what had happened and asked if I could bring them early. She said sure. Long story short (too late, I know), they behaved well and don't seem traumatized. Paul and I are still exhausted.