When Jean-Paul Sartre said “Hell is other people”, he had obviously never put ear drops into the ears of a cat who really, really didn’t want them.
Sartre ought to have known better – after all, he had a cat (famously named “Rien”, French for “nothing”). Obviously Simone de Beauvoir was the one who took responsibility for the boring cat chores such as vet appointments and medication, whilst Sartre was the fun parent:
(Picture from facebook.com.)
On a somewhat related note, Albert Camus’s cat, Cigarette, looked so startlingly like Catorze that it’s actually chilling. Look at the teeny body, the manga eyes and the rear end in the air, all the while flirting with a man. This could even be a picture OF Catorze, non?
(Picture from reddit.com.)
I watched two YouTube videos about how to give ear drops to cats but, in each case, the cats just sat there and let it happen. So they didn’t really help. Come on, vets and YouTubers: we want representation, please. In the same way that a tall, thin model aged twenty-five doesn’t demonstrate what clothes will look like on my body, a video of a compliant cat gives me no idea about how to medicate my own cat.
After warming the bottle, as per the instructions on the first video, I managed perhaps two drops in one ear and 0.01 drops in the other. It was impossible to know how much I was putting in, with the nozzle being inside Catorze’s ear, but this is an estimate based on, erm, random supposition. A second attempt, which yielded more liquid, was more successful although, again, was it overall too little, too much or the right amount? Who knows?
I tried to massage his ears afterwards, although that didn’t go brilliantly, either. The narrator of the first video said that the cat “might like this”. Erm, no.
The biggest surprise was that Catorze stayed with me and allowed the second attempt to happen, so quickly after the first. I then realised that Cat Daddy was in the kitchen, hammering out “House of the Rising Sun” on the dreaded guitar, so Sa Maj made no attempt to escape. It’s a sad day when a cat would rather sit with the person who just assaulted them with ear drops, than leave the room and risk being even a metre or two closer to the Discordant Instrument of Doom.
Anyway, at least we have a plan for Catorzian containment during future dosings: make sure that Cat Daddy is always playing the guitar in the place which is his exit route.
And the irony is that, perhaps, after the grey alien mank has cleared from his ears, the poor little sod may be able to hear the guitar better.
louiscatorze.com 
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