Toni writes: A conversation with the Emergency Vet.

8am Saturday morning:

Emergency Vet: “Hello?”
Me: “Hi. I don’t know if this is a problem, but I thought I’d call just in case…”
E.V: “That’s fine, what’s the problem?”
Me: “It’s my cat, Darcy. She’s just eaten a load of tissue. Is that going to make her sick?”
E.V: “How much did she eat?”
Me: “A fair bit… I was cleaning up cheese sauce with the tissue and she just ate the bits I’d already used.”
E.V: *beginning to snigger now* “Is she showing any signs of distress?”
Me: “No, she’s fine, but I thought I’d check…”
E.V: “She’ll be fine, don’t worry. It’ll break down into mush. But if she does start being sick or having problems going to the toilet, call us back.”
Me: “Okay, thanks for your time.”
E.V: “No problem, you’ve made my morning!”

Later on that same day…

We’d had some packages delivered from Amazon and they’d come wrapped in an elastic band. Which Darcy then ate. So I called again, and to my horror, it was the same woman:

Me: “My cat has just eaten an elastic band. She swallowed it before I could stop her.”
E.V: “Is this the same cat that I was called about this morning?”
Me: *deeply ashamed* “Yes, she just grabs it and swallows it before you can get to her…”
E.V: *laughing*  “It’s fine! She sounds like a real character. And no, the elastic band won’t hurt her.”
Me: “You know, her brother regularly eats cardboard.”
E.V: *really laughing now* “Cats have much stronger digestive systems than us, they can eat stuff like that. I wouldn’t recommend it, though…”
Me: “Oh believe me, I try and stop them. Calling you twice is the most embarrassing thing to happen to me for weeks.”
E.V: “Don’t be embarrassed, you’ve given me an anecdote I can dine out on for weeks!”

What is wrong with the twins? What happened to them in the womb?

(This is all absolutely true, by the way!)

Darcy writes: All better!

Last Tuesday, Mummy and Daddy came very close to feeling my wrath when they took me to The Vets. Apparently – and I’m still not sure I believe them – I had a problem with my eye. Now, okay, said eye was a bit itchy and painful, but I couldn’t see the supposed “bright pink” skin and I sure as hell couldn’t feel it. Well, erm, I could, but… well, anyway, I’m sure it would have cleared up all on it’s own. The trip to The Vets was not necessary.

And the worst thing? M&D were all, “you know, if we just take Darcy she might flip out about being parted from Donncha, so we’d better take him too”. So on one of the first occasions I could have had some time away from my idiot brother, they brought him along with me!

AND, he was NOISY. For pretty much the entire trip to the vets, he was miaowing and screaming his vacant head off.

“Hey bruv,” said I. “Why don’t you shut up for a bit?”

“I don’t like it, Darce!” he cried in response.

“You’ve been in the car plenty of times before, Donncha, and not had a problem.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that.” Then he shut up. I’m sorry, but that boy is a Drama Queen.

So we got to the vets and naturally, the two of us became the hit of the waiting room. EVERYONE was staring at us saying how cute we were. Then we went into the vets and the The Vet took one look at my eye, said it was infected and then I was back in the basket and it was all over. Or so I thought.

When we got home, I was padding around, glad to be home, when Daddy grabbed me and carried me over to Mummy. “Oh good!” I thought happily, “I’m probably going to get some special cubby! Fabulous!”. But you know, I didn’t get a special cubby or anything like it. I got assaulted. Groped. Grabbed. Daddy PINNED ME DOWN and Mummy squeezed some kind of ointment on to my eye. When I was FINALLY released, I ran over to my In A Piss Corner and sat there glaring at the two of them. And the worst bit? This whole palava was repeated for TEN ENTIRE DAYS. Seriously, I should report them.

But now, apparently, it’s all better and doesn’t need to be done anymore. And yes, I’ll admit that my eye doesn’t hurt or sting so much no more, but in future I’d rather be consulted about these things before treatment is decided. Honestly, the pair of ‘em are lucky I like them so much, or they would have been D.E.A.D.