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If there is a less fun place than the vet during a heatwave, I don’t want to know what it is. And it’s even worse when said visit ends up being a catastrophic waste of time. You don’t have to ask me how I know this, because you’re about to find out.

Louis Catorze needed a blood test, because the vet was refusing to prescribe more Methimazole without one. We wouldn’t ordinarily have agreed to it unless he’d had symptoms, but we didn’t really have much choice.

Cat Daddy and I sat in the waiting room whilst they carried out the test and, during that time, other patients came in. These included Cosmo the chubby* retriever, Eddie the shouty tabby, and Midnight the just-spayed tortie. 

*This is not a judgement on my part. I have no idea how much a retriever ought to weigh, but there was a big set of weighing scales in the waiting room and, when Cosmo hopped on, the staff gasped upon learning his weight. His mamma then turned to him and said, scoldingly, “Cosmo! You need to lose weight!” as if Cosmo would a) understand, b) give a shit or c) do anything about it.

So it was a packed-out house by the time the vet came out to give us the happy news: the test hadn’t been able to take place, because 2.78kg Catorze had fought off all the staff like a katana-wielding ninja and wouldn’t have it.

Oh. Mon. Dieu. 

“He has a lot of fight in him for an old boy!” were, I believe, their exact words. Hearing that, whilst feeling everyone’s eyes boring into me, was the moment that I actually felt my soul leave my body. 

Anyway, they ended up letting us buy the disallowed Methimazole regardless, I imagine because they felt sorry for us. And we now need to give the little bastard some Gabapentin an hour before his rescheduled visit, whenever that may be, to sedate him. The vet also mentioned signing an “off licence form” which, disappointingly, isn’t a voucher to get a free bottle of vodka with the blood test, but to confirm that we understand that the Gabapentin is human medication (or some such thing – I was too busy withering away with embarrassment to take it all in). 

Catorze was deathly silent all the way back and rewarded us with two piles of puke when we reached home, one of which was the biggest I’ve ever seen and probably twice his body weight. 

Cat Daddy: “Oh my God, that’s a big ‘un!” (It then transpired that he was looking at the small pile, and hadn’t even seen the big one.)

So, with our expectation originally to have answers as to how much the Methimazole was helping and whether it was stuffing up Catorze’s kidneys, we now, instead, have to rearrange the blood test and somehow drug the little sod beforehand. And I would be prepared to bet my house on it being raging hellfire temperatures again on the next appointment day. 

What a time to be alive, albeit barely.

For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com