It is official.
Our cats are agents of pestilence and biological warfare.
I can only surmise that my enemies – of which I have many, (some highly placed in both the Royal family and the television industry – how else do you explain my non-starting TV career and being forced to break up from Kate Middleton just so she could marry William?) – conspired to enlist my own cats in a dastardly plan to lay me low.
In a plan as fiendish as strapping nuclear warheads to dolphins and training them to swim into Chinese ports my cats were laced with some kind of highly active flea attractant. Before they could say “Whiskas gives us the shits” they were complete little insectoid biozones carrying the flea payload equivalent of a million megaton atomic bomb.
Detonation occurred some weeks ago in an undisclosed location somewhere in the house. The explosion was despicably silent. We didn’t even know the thing had gone off until we started to get hit by the fall-out: horrid red blotches and welts began to appear on our lower limbs. In themselves they were quite painful and annoying but these were only phase one.
Phase two was the constant irritation that these welts (or bites if you prefer) engender in the weltee. Suddenly, our own unconscious and subconscious mind was being used against us. We began to scratch. Scratch whilst performing other tasks. Scratch in our sleep. Scratch when we knew without a doubt that we were scratching and knew that we really shouldn’t… because scratching only made things worse. Welts turned into open sores and wounds that wept blood.
And. Still. Itched.
We hit back. Chemical warfare. The cats as unwitting agents had to take the full blast. Both of them got Frontlined to within an inch of their feline dignity. They weren’t happy. They were inexplicably moist and experienced a chemical odour between their ears that they could not shake off.
I don’t know how many fleas we wiped out with that first strike but I do know it was us that scarred the sky so that the sun could not shine. No wait, that was from The Matrix. Sorry.
It wasn’t enough though. Frontline failed. And the front got pushed back and back until we found we had been overrun.
And now we have no choice. No choice at all.
It’s dirty bomb time.
We have an appointment with a vet on Saturday. A veritable veteran of inter-household hostilities such as we are experiencing at the moment. We are going to drop the big one. We are going to wield the power of the gods and unleash the power of a thousand suns.
Well, maybe not quite that but we are going to gas the entire house. We are going to wipe out all insectoid life within a range of 40 metres.
I’ve posted warning signs to give them one last chance: "Pack up your powerfully sprung hind-legs and head for the hills while you still can. Signed Dr Oppenheimer."
What a pity the bitey little buggers can’t read.
Mwah ha ha!
Showing posts with label vets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vets. Show all posts
Friday, July 12, 2013
Friday, May 27, 2011
One For Sorrow
It’s not a common occurrence for me to feel like Rolf Harris (even when I am humming-and-harring along with my wobble board) but this week I felt like I’d stepped into the old man’s Blundstone boots good and proper.
A member of the Great British public, always so ready to immerse themselves full-bodiedly into the foaming waters of sentimentality, came rushing into my workplace on Wednesday to report an injured magpie lying in the park outside. Could we ring the RSPCA because they didn’t have a phone on them?
We’re not hard-hearted psychopaths here where I work (*cough*) but even the most soft hearted philanthropist among us rolled his eyes (read that as: I rolled my eyes) because inevitably this would mean us chasing our tails with the RSPCA recorded messaged, fully automated, call centred screening device. Or, “sod off and take it to the vets” as it is known for short.
Now, I’m not having a go at the RSPCA here. They do a fab job and they’re one of the jewels in the British crown. But from past experience I know that they are always heavily subscribed and naturally have to prioritise their cases. An injured magpie was not going to take priority over Mrs Brady’s Pekingese that had somehow found itself the prize fighter in a badger baiting ring. To a lot of people – not me, I hasten to add – magpies are seen as vermin.
Personally I think they are wonderfully majestic members of the crow family and I have a soft spot for them.
Which is probably what motivated me to dismiss my initial objections and get involved with trying to rescue Albert (as I secretly christened him) in the first place.
Albert, when I went out to locate him was in a very bad way. Another magpie was pecking at his head (I’m pretty sure this was not a form of CPR) and was trying to flap his attacker way rather pathetically. In fact, I’m not even sure that Albert was aware of what he was doing – the movement could simply have been an automatic response at the motor neurone level. Poor Albert’s head was pecked clean of feathers, bloodied and I couldn’t really discern where his eyes were.
In true hospital TV drama parlance: I didn’t think he was going to make it.
Nevertheless, I put him gently in a box and a colleague persevered with the RSPCA’s telephone version of musical chairs. Eventually, when we got through, the verdict was what we’d expected. No free operatives in the area, please take Albert to the local vets.
We rang the vets. They agreed to take him, though said the RSPCA was naughty to pass the buck onto them.
Whatever. Neither I nor Albert cared. He was doing nothing more than breathing and I figured every second lost was less chance of Albert being able to find his Victoria again.
I took him straight round to the vets. The vet did actually apologize – apparently she’d given me the wrong information. Vets are meant to take wildlife; but they don’t get paid for it.
Whilst I felt sorry for the vets, I felt more sorry for Albert. I could feel his life ebbing away inside the box.
The vet had a quick look at Albert and her diagnosis was: “Oh he is poorly, isn’t he?” She then took custody, thanked me for bringing him in and said she’d “do the deed”.
From this I assumed that full CPR and an iron-lung were not on the cards for Albert. And after many dedicated years of service to his country too!
I left the vets feeling oddly flat. Kind of in limbo. I felt like I should have said goodbye. Or offered to give Albert a decent burial. A horse drawn carriage and rose petals on the roads.
Our association had been all too brief.
So.
Now I know how both Queen Victoria and Rolf Harris feel.
It’s an odd feeling. One can’t quite see what it is yet.
A member of the Great British public, always so ready to immerse themselves full-bodiedly into the foaming waters of sentimentality, came rushing into my workplace on Wednesday to report an injured magpie lying in the park outside. Could we ring the RSPCA because they didn’t have a phone on them?
We’re not hard-hearted psychopaths here where I work (*cough*) but even the most soft hearted philanthropist among us rolled his eyes (read that as: I rolled my eyes) because inevitably this would mean us chasing our tails with the RSPCA recorded messaged, fully automated, call centred screening device. Or, “sod off and take it to the vets” as it is known for short.
Now, I’m not having a go at the RSPCA here. They do a fab job and they’re one of the jewels in the British crown. But from past experience I know that they are always heavily subscribed and naturally have to prioritise their cases. An injured magpie was not going to take priority over Mrs Brady’s Pekingese that had somehow found itself the prize fighter in a badger baiting ring. To a lot of people – not me, I hasten to add – magpies are seen as vermin.
Personally I think they are wonderfully majestic members of the crow family and I have a soft spot for them.
Which is probably what motivated me to dismiss my initial objections and get involved with trying to rescue Albert (as I secretly christened him) in the first place.
Albert, when I went out to locate him was in a very bad way. Another magpie was pecking at his head (I’m pretty sure this was not a form of CPR) and was trying to flap his attacker way rather pathetically. In fact, I’m not even sure that Albert was aware of what he was doing – the movement could simply have been an automatic response at the motor neurone level. Poor Albert’s head was pecked clean of feathers, bloodied and I couldn’t really discern where his eyes were.
In true hospital TV drama parlance: I didn’t think he was going to make it.
Nevertheless, I put him gently in a box and a colleague persevered with the RSPCA’s telephone version of musical chairs. Eventually, when we got through, the verdict was what we’d expected. No free operatives in the area, please take Albert to the local vets.
We rang the vets. They agreed to take him, though said the RSPCA was naughty to pass the buck onto them.
Whatever. Neither I nor Albert cared. He was doing nothing more than breathing and I figured every second lost was less chance of Albert being able to find his Victoria again.
I took him straight round to the vets. The vet did actually apologize – apparently she’d given me the wrong information. Vets are meant to take wildlife; but they don’t get paid for it.
Whilst I felt sorry for the vets, I felt more sorry for Albert. I could feel his life ebbing away inside the box.
The vet had a quick look at Albert and her diagnosis was: “Oh he is poorly, isn’t he?” She then took custody, thanked me for bringing him in and said she’d “do the deed”.
From this I assumed that full CPR and an iron-lung were not on the cards for Albert. And after many dedicated years of service to his country too!
I left the vets feeling oddly flat. Kind of in limbo. I felt like I should have said goodbye. Or offered to give Albert a decent burial. A horse drawn carriage and rose petals on the roads.
Our association had been all too brief.
So.
Now I know how both Queen Victoria and Rolf Harris feel.
It’s an odd feeling. One can’t quite see what it is yet.
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