Peeps and Poops

I called my sister right away but she never answers her phone. I left a message. “Hey I have a cat question.”

My sister, a veterinary graduate student, usually doesn’t take my problems seriously. I guess “If I wet my cat will she cool off?” and “Do cats need love or can I just feed them?” aren’t the normal questions she entertains during the course of her studies. But they’re valid! I need to know how to make my cat stop panting and how to get it to stop being so affectionate. How else will I survive with these animals in my home?

As I sat, watching Seinfeld, I wondered what’s a cat owner to do next? I had never had a sick pet before. Did I have to go to the vet? Maybe I was overreacting. Will I be broke tomorrow because I was confused about my dumbest animal? Is she even hurt? Did I imagine it? Did she even notice?

Thank Seinfeld! My phone rang, it was her.

“Hey, I’m on call so I’m not answering unknown numbers. What’s up?” I wondered if that explanation made sense. Jerry was on the phone with his parents. I remembered why I called, without realizing I had forgotten.

“Oh uhhh… there was blood near Haircut’s litter box yesterday and we thought she cut her foot, but today we realized it was her poops and there was more blood.” I described the problem as quickly as possible so she wouldn’t get bored and go back to her nap.

“How are her peeps?” she asked. Would she talk this way to other patients’ owners? At least I understood.

“How are her peeps?” I repeated to my friend in my room, as he watched over Haircut.

He also understood. “I don’t think there was any blood there. I don’t know. We can’t tell. Lovelace says hi!” he concluded, referring to his own cat.

“He doesn’t think there was any. I guess. Well, we don’t know. We can’t tell.” I left out the greeting. I don’t pass greetings along, not for people, not for cats. I wondered how Lovelace was doing. Wait, no, I’m worried about Haircut, I remember.

“Well there’s nothing I can do.” That was usually her answer. She was going to tell me to keep her litter clean and pay attention to see if she gets any worse. “Keep her litter really clean and make sure she isn’t acting different. If she gets worse you might have to take her in somewhere.”

“Okay, that will be easy. She’s on vacation next door so she’s the only cat. We can watch her poops.”

“Okay I’m going back to sleep. Goodbye.”

She said something about sleeping in a living room at a horse farm. I didn’t really understand.

—-

The next time that I called my sister, there was significantly better news. “Nothing at all,” I informed my sister.

I had followed Haircut around for weeks, making sure everything was fine. With three cats, it’s hard to tell apart things that are left behind.

When I finally got around to calling my sister, the problem had so far disappeared from my mind that it occurred to me she might have forgotten what was even wrong.

“Hey, remember Haircut was sick?” I said to her.

“Yeah, she’s fine since right? It was probably nothing.”

“No more blood or anything. Clean poops, clean peeps.”

“She cut her booty hole, that’s my official diagnosis.”

“Thanks, what do I owe you?”

“Just your love.”