Parenting children and care-taking critters requires a certain flexibility with mayhem. Some people handle it like life-time surfers, head-first diving into the next unpredictable wave. Others manage with a Lord of the Flies approach, letting it all settle out on its own. We face each day like people who live in earthquake country. Day to day, our lives are scheduled, structured with layers of assignments and calendars, but we have a “Go Bag” packed and ready. In other words, I’m prepared for chaos, but I prefer not to think about it. This morning Chaos flicked her finger at all our carefully placed scaffolds sending it all a splatter.
CC, one of our two cats, had been coughing for a couple of weeks, and after it looked like she was losing weight, I gave in and admitted that she should see a vet. Beyond a cough, there was little evidence of illness. Both cats, CC and her sister, George, used the dog door to go in and out as they please. Referenced dogs, Siouxsie and Oli, clean our yard of all cat waste products, so I didn’t know if she’d had a lot of hairballs or eaten something nasty. Temperamentally, she is a tortie, so no clues there. But CC still slept with me at night, and she and our basset, Oli, conspired to wake me each morning before 5am to be fed. So it didn’t feel urgent. I called to schedule an early Saturday morning appointment. It shouldn’t interfere with our schedule, and I would be able to contain her between her 5am feeding and her 7:15am appointment.
When I called Tuesday, however, they had no Saturday appointments. Our regular vet, and our back-up vet, both of whom were early risers had left the practice, but could I bring her in Wednesday (which was tomorrow when we talked) at 10:30am with a new vet. I not so merrily said yes, added it to the calendar, and began the process of moving my meetings, notifying folks that I would be wfh (work from home), and preparing to be offline for a period while I was at the vet.
The plan yesterday morning, then, was to figure out how to contain CC after dining at 5am until 10am when I would pack her into her carrier and bicycle her to the vet.
As usual while George politely waited downstairs, just before 5am, CC yoga-clawed me in the legs and Oli attempted and failed to scale our raised bed, her wagging tail banging against the door while I grabbed my clothes and stumbled down the stairs. The cats I would feed at the bottom of the stairs, but Oli always accompanied, offering her dishwashing services just in case the cats’ food bowl needed to be cleaned of the remnants from the prior day’s morsels.
While CC and George ate and Oli drooled, I began the process of incarceration. It looked something like this:
- 4:55am Feline subject, CC, first contained by closing the door to the room with the dog and cat exits. Also the room the dogs are fed in, so this was knowingly only a temporary solution.
- 5:45am Subject is unwillingly contained in the shower of the downstairs bathroom, also with the bathroom door closed.
- 6:30am Children who usually use the downstairs bathroom to prepare for their days will be diverted to the upstairs bathroom resulting in whining about the wrong brushes and missing sunscreens.
- 7:00am (Beginning of adult female’s workday) While the male adult corralled children and ensured that remaining household was fed, female adult struggles to connect the home laptop (because her work laptop was safely at work because today was not supposed to be a wfh day) to male adult’s wfh desk and station. Monitors, keyboards, mice, power all had to be reconfigured. Some cursing may have emitted from the adults’ bedroom where desk resides.
- 7:15am Older child begins to grumble across the hall in the other bedroom about not having pants to wear for blacksmithing camp (note this is day three of a five day camp).
- 7:20am Female adult leaves workstation and inquires why the child cannot re-wear the same black pants from the prior day since he will be blacksmithing, not an activity known for its cleanliness. Child waffles and wavers and dismisses both pairs of jeans pulled from child’s own dresser, as well as the only other pair of jeans female parental adult who should be working finds digging through the closet’s bag of larger clothes intended for his future use.
- 7:35am Female adult suggests to child he simply not go to camp, but instead go to Goodwill or Target to find pants that he would want to wear to camp for days four and five.
- 7:40am Child takes gripes downstairs to male adult for better answers. Female adult finally establishes an online presence at “work” forty minutes late.
- 7:55am Male adult calls out departure of the youngest human member and both canines. Female returns downstairs to kiss humans.
- 8:00am Adult male member of household departs to transfer canines for their spa day to the doggy daycare. Child presumably would be dropped off at his two week movie making summer camp before male adult went to his place of employment.
- 8:05am Unable to contain the guilt for leaving sick cat in a wet shower stall with drops of water still escaping the overhead rain shower head. Female first barricades dog door and places plastic cover for the cat door in place before picking up cat from shower, nuzzling her and then letting her go.
- 8:10am upon not hearing the whining wail of the cat in question, female adult member of the household discovers that cat pulled off the cover to the cat door and had escaped. Female adult now wails at oldest child to put down his comic book, come out into the yard, and to flush out cat from outdoor hiding places. Adult succumbs to opening another can of cat food for enticement.
- 8:11am Cat in question illustrates limited wits by coming when called.
- 8:15am With the library carefully closed, cat carried inside, adult female returns upstairs but then notes a bit of what appears to be liquid cat sh*t on her pant leg. Unsure when she would have acquired this, adult females walks around house looking into every room to find the source of the crap. Discovers that cat had had an accident perhaps in the bathroom because bathmat has a small streak.
- 8:20am Female adult swears again, pulls out a single Clorox wipe. Wipes leg of jeans. Wipes small droplet on tile, then attempts to pick up a portion off of the bathmat. Discards wipe and decides a bag is needed to gather stool sample. With plastic shopping bag around hand, adult female smears cat dung all over the bathmat as well as the plastic bag. Decides this will not work as a stool sample and sneaks out the side door to take bag directly to trash can.
- 8:25am Upon opening side door to sneak back in, cat makes escape attempt. Owner squeezes cat suddenly between leg and doorframe and screams at older, malaised, comic-reading child to assist again. Child puts down comic and arrives after adult female has lifted cat and managed to make her way back in.
- 8:30am Child advises adult female that he cannot decide if he should stay home or to go to camp, shrugging a classic shoulder and eye droop combination of existential teens around the world. Adult female offers options of things to do if child stays home which includes shopping for pants, accompanying adult female to vet, and explicitly no time on the XBox. Child departs for camp. Female adult returns to bedroom to work.
- 8:35am Female adult realizes that she still has crap on her leg and takes off pants, then discovers that she has crap on her shoe as well. More swearing ensues while female adult carries one shoe and pants downstairs, now investigating where she might have tracked crap covered-shoe. Revisits rooms with more wipes while walking around in her underwear. Female leaves shoes and pants downstairs returns upstairs with more wipes, puts on different pants, and listens for the requisite yowls that inform adult that cat is still in the house somewhere. Adult sneaks out side door again carrying shoes to hose, when she discovers that both shoes had been shat upon, the other having crap on the top of the shoe and shoe laces. Adult deduces while spraying the crap out of the shoes – a valid use of the word ‘literally’ – that cat had probably shat on adult while being picked up from the shower and petted apologetically by guilt-ridden adult.
- 8:45am Adult decides to launder everything including the shoes. Debates laundering cat. Decides against.
- 8:50am Adult takes cat to bedroom/office behind closed door. Cat gets settled onto bed on female adult’s side.
- 8:50am-9:45am Adult grooves in the work zone and completes a number of tasks before…
- 9:46am Cat begins whiney wailing. Adult puts in ear plugs.
- 9:50am Unbeknownst to adult, cat begins hacking.
- 9:55am Adult takes out ear plugs and begins process of pushing/pulling/stretching/dropping/man-handling cat into carrier.
- 10:02am Adult closes cat carrier with resentful squalling cat inside.
- 10:03am Adult discovers that cat had generously left both vomit and runny stool samples on female adult’s blankets and heating pad. Adult runs downstairs for baggies to collect sample.
- 10:05am Adult strips top blanket and heating pad from bed and prepares to run another load of laundry.
- 10:10am Adult takes cat in carrier and two baggies along with personal belongings downstairs to bucket bicycle.
- 10:15am Cat unhappy about being in a cat carrier strapped to the front of a bicycle biking in traffic.
- 10:25am Adult locks up bike at vet and walks in with cat.
After a battery of tests and an interrogation designed to passive aggressively make me feel guilty about the level of attention the feline members of the house receive, (certainly, it is less than the dogs and the kids, but perhaps more than the husband, and definitely more than the plants and the house itself), there are no real answers, only reassurances and am ample sized invoice. There’s no clear blockage in the X-Rays, but her heart and arteries are diminished enough to indicate significant dehydration. The blood in her stool contains no obvious indicators. The blood test and white cell count imply an infection. CC was hydrated subcutaneously, injected with an antibiotics, and sent home with anti-nausea meds as well as pet probiotics.
At dinner, the discussion naturally turned to CC’s care, including Eliot’s volunteering to stay home with her today to watch her. The big reveal of the cost of the visit launched Sandy into a long lecture on medical expenses, the privilege of having pets, and then the importance of having health insurance. We transitioned naturally from pet care to health care, and our six-year-old managed to follow much of the discussion because it was accentuated regularly with tales of medical mishaps our family had experienced: Sandy’s severed tendon and surgery, Eliot’s concussions and CT scans, Auden’s cardiology review and Pyloric stenosis surgery, and of course, my regular care.
We ended the evening with laughter about the nature of chaos by the telling of both boys’ birth stories. Surely mayhem wreaks havoc on our lives, and the more pets and children and responsibilities, the more likely our structured lives will be disrupted. Still, I wouldn’t have it any differently. Felines, canines, kids, husband, plants… the amount of life in our life makes it worth living.