Taking a cat to the vet: always an adventure, but never the good kind.
On the morning of our steroid shot appointment, Louis Catorze was nowhere to be found. Cat Daddy eventually found him in the guest bedroom, asleep on the autumn/winter duvet and, just as he tried to grab him, the little sod darted under the bed.
Cat Daddy shut him in the bedroom whilst we finished our tea, so that at least we wouldn’t have to search for him when it was time to go.
Then the screaming started.
When we went back upstairs to put Catorze into his transportation pod, he decided that he no longer wanted to be released from the room and dived back under the bed.
Eventually it was a two-man effort to flush him out, with one of us (Cat Daddy) scrabbling at one side of the bed to make him bolt, and the other (me) catching him on the other side. Catorze never scratches, but he did give me a hefty kicking with his back feet as I scooped him up and stuffed him into the pod.
As usual, we walked across the park to the vet practice with Catorzian screams ringing out through the air, falling silent only when an alarmed brown Labrador in the park stopped to stare at him. And, because the translucent mesh side of the pod was facing that way – we always give him a scenic route, just like Marie Antoinette on her last ride to the guillotine – he was able to stare right back.
The biggest surprise of the morning was that Catorze has gained weight, despite his Ibrahima Konaté-style fasting during the day and only eating after dark. We were all ready to have to deal with decisions about further testing, medication and dietary changes due to his weight loss, but it seems we don’t have to since he’s now a whopping 3.14kg.
There has been some indecision as to whether or not Catorze has a heart murmur; first we were told that he did, then a different vet said that he didn’t, then another one said that maybe he did after all, etc. Apparently one of the danger signs is a cat doing forty breaths, or more, per minute. I have just conducted a little test on Catorze and he did twenty-three, so he’s not even close, nor does he have any of the other classic heart murmur signs such as breathlessness, low energy (!) and a distended belly.
We came away from the appointment with our hearts full. Our wallets, on the other hand, were anything but.
Cat Daddy, to Catorze later: “£120, Louis. That’s how much you cost us today.”
Catorze: “Mwah!”
(It was actually £130, but never mind.)
As we approach Beltane and Le Roi’s birthday, it looks as if he will be in his finest form yet. This is wonderful and terrifying in equal measure.
louiscatorze.com 
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