La faculté de médicine

~ iamthesunking

You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?

Ok, so a vet appointment isn’t, by most people’s reasonable interpretation, a cross-country trip. However, if you have ever had to transport a screaming animal to somewhere it doesn’t want to be transported, you will know that it really feels like one.

At present, it’s a ten-minute walk across the park, and Catorze is so gossamer-light that even I, with my back problems, can manage to carry him in his swish transportation pod (apart from that one time when I couldn’t). The ease of the walk is such that the convenience outweighs the massive embarrassment of his screaming, which rings out through the park like an air raid siren and causes people to stop in their tracks and look over. However, the vet practice will be closing sometime soon, because the building complex in which it’s situated is due to be renovated. Nobody knows when, or if, it will return to the same place once the renovation is complete.

Luckily they have other branches in W4, W5 and TW3, all of which close by. However, they are further away than our current short walk to the TW8 branch. And the W5 one doesn’t have parking, which means that I would have to either carry screaming Catorze on the bus (no) or drive him to work, somehow keep him contained there all morning and then walk him to his appointment during my lunch hour (HELL, no – his path and those of my students should absolutely never cross).

So my means of transport really depends on where will be going the next time the little sod needs a vet; will it be Happening Hounslow (car), Charming Chiswick (car) or Exciting Ealing (still no idea how)?

A black basket case in a black basket case (pictured during a vet appointment a couple of years ago).

40 thoughts on “La faculté de médicine”

  4. Beautiful carrier for a beautiful kitty 🙂 I drove 9 hours with two cats (when I moved from the US to Toronto): one cat was terrified and stayed on my lap (yes, while I was driving) during the whole trip without moving. The other cat screamed and jumped around the car for 9 hours! Years later, I put them both in a big dog crate and in the cargo hold of an airplane and that was scary for both of them and for me, too! Miss Penny stayed with me on our flight to Kingston, that was way easier for us both. I hope you never have to fly with Sa Maj, I would feel bad for the other passengers 😉

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          1. Oh really? I kinda thought he’d drop like a cannonball (also screaming) and then glomp onto whoever was at the other end like a facehugger from Alien 😂

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            1. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Oh goodness! I think you’re probably right! I thought he would weigh too little to do that, but face-glomping is much more his style!

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            2. It’s just that the image of a screaming leaf doesn’t incite much fear, you know? Much wincing at the noise, but if he’s drifting, you’d have too much time to run away. xD

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            3. He could do both? Float like a leaf, then suddenly drop and glomp? Like when spacecraft enter the Earth’s atmosphere and gravity takes hold?

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  9. Oh big bottoms! I just typed a long message and instead of posting I hit the back arrow. So you’ve been let off a long description of the antics of Cheeky escaping her carrier and me forgetting to ask for big boy Theo aka Darren to have his vaccination until I had paid after his examination and was tucking him in the car before I remembered and dashed back in the vets to beg for them to quickly squeeze him back in for his vaccination!! Anyway what I originally had to say was that Cheeky is a little cat to look at but the weight of her, well I could barely carry her into the vet from the car!!

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      1. 😂😂😂 I don’t remember I was too harassed to ask and the vet just quickly typed it in! I think Alice said she’s 6kg, Merlot had put half a kilo on and so is the same as Louis, 3kg 🙄

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  12. I didn’t realize that wasn’t an everywhere thing. It’s really nice to feel confident that the vet knows what they’re doing. We’ve seen one that clearly is a dog person and the results… weren’t good. But as long as you can find a vet that actually likes and cares about cats, that’s all that matters (oh, and isn’t too far away so you only have to spend a minimal amount of time listening to pitiful cries and/or screams all the way there…)

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