Our first few days back under Catorzian rule have been quite strange, almost like living with another cat. I’ve even been wondering whether the vet gave us the right one back, but then I remembered that nobody in their right mind would want to keep Louis Catorze.
In all the years we’ve lived with him, Catorze has NEVER been silent, and his screaming is as much a trademark as his minuscule size and vampire fangs. Yet my morning wake-up, breakfast, being greeted when I come home from work, all take place in a chilling, soundless vacuum.
I didn’t know what to do about the vet’s casual medication instructions, so I have been giving Catorze a pain-relieving Buprenorphine syringe every day, to be on the safe side. It’s not been fun. It comes in ready-filled syringes, so at least I don’t have to do Maths, but the instructions state that the liquid has to be dispensed onto the gums/tongue and NOT down the throat. They are very specific about this. As you can imagine, this is absolutely impossible to do; Catorze may be running a reduced service at the moment but he can still develop the strength of ten angry bears when he doesn’t want to do something.
The Cerenia was also more complicated than it needed to be, because the vet only supplied one pill with the instruction to cut it into quarters. Of course it doesn’t cut cleanly and, instead, splinters into irregular shards and dust, so gathering together the bits and getting them into Catorze is no easy feat.
Luckily, he scoffed the lot after I mopped up some of the shrapnel and wrapped it in a piece of cheese. But, when I tried to do the same again the next day, he wouldn’t have it. So I had to schlep to Lidl to look for some prosciutto di Parma and luckily I found some in the chilled section, after initial heart failure when I saw that the ambient section only had jamón Serrano (which Catorze doesn’t like).
We really hope that Catorze will be well enough to be his usual self as the Spooky Season unfolds. Yes, despite all our past complaining about the screaming and the mischief, now we’re actually longing for them.
EDIT: Oh good grief, the screaming came back just as I was about to schedule this post. Holy hell.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
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