It was another crazy Saturday night at the waiting room of the emergency vet clinic.
Jessica Burgess
Clearly Unedited
Monty the cat curled pitifully in a carrier that was splotched with bird poop – its former function had been a temporary parrot home. I never thought I'd need a cat carrier. After all, I don't even have a cat.
It's true, there are some cats who hang around my house. And sometimes I feed them, but only on weeknights and Saturdays. And occasionally they sleep in my garage because I leave the door open for them. But they are NOT MY CATS. They are random, feral strays for whom I am in no way responsible. Even when I give them a flea dip. Or feed them on Sundays.
Monty, one of the random cats whom I don't care about at all, hadn't eaten in a couple of days. Also, she seemed listless. But my boyfrusband and I did not care – why should we? Not our cat, not our problem.
"She'll be fine," we said, and put a movie in the DVD player, exchanging glances filled with not caring.
"Maybe," I finally said timidly. "Maybe we should go for a drive. And take Monty along, not that she is in any way our cat. And if we pass by a vet with late hours, maybe we should stop in, you know, just for fun. And while we're there, the vet could look at Monty."
"Good idea," he said, his coat already on. "A drive sounds great, in a non-cat-related way."
So we found ourselves at a 24-hour animal clinic with Monty glaring sadly at us from inside the carrier. She would have yowled, but she was too listless. We were totally not worried, seeing as how Monty was not connected to us in any substantial way.
"Oh God, do you think she'll die?" my boyfrusband said, almost crying.
"I hope not," I sobbed into his shoulder. "I LOVE HER."
Then the vet examined her, and revealed that she had a "fever of unknown origin."
"She should be fine," the vet said, wearing scrubs printed with cartoon dogs, which should have made it hard to take what she said seriously, but she had an aura of knowledge about her, so we pretended she was wearing a business suit. "Just give her these antibiotics and appetite stimulants."
"Good thing we don't care about this cat," I said as the receptionist ran our bank card for $250. "Otherwise this would have been scary."
Monty's breath smells like cat food. E-mail her via Jessica at jburgess@quickdfw.com.
