Being a single parent meant that I was the one who took charge when it came to doctor's appointment, or dentist appointment, or taking the pets to the vet, trying to explain to the Vice Principal of FHS that Meredyth really did want to be in school, and no, she wasn't intentionally being difficult. . .
After a while, you get to accept this as part of your everyday life.
So when Stephen and Keith took the dogs to the vet this afternoon, I was in a quandry.
Thirty-three people were sitting in McCain Hall waiting for me to come to regal them with my knowledge of Advanced Qualitative Research Methods.
And since I have yet to hear of any scientific discovery that allows someone to be in two places at once, I clearly didn't get to take my babies to the vet.
For the last couple of weeks, the two of them have been scratching themselves senseless. Tikka, in particular, was starting to sound like an entire group of First Nations drummers when she would use her back leg to scratch her front leg.
At first we thought it was a pressure sore.
I was regulary slathering her with hydrocortizone cremes. As soon as I put them on, Frankie would lick them off.
Not to be outsmarted by an 18 month old puppy, I kicked things up a notch with a hydrocortizone spray.
I was bathing and brushing them.
Frankie was starting to look like a pie bald horse.
Scratching became Tikkas primary form of exercise.
Finally, and yes we should have succumbed to the only plausible solution much sooner, we took them to the vet.
Or, Stephen and Keith took them to the vet.
But I paid.
$260.00 later, the dogs were Advantaged and will be medicated for the next 10 days.
The cats were Advantaged.
And outraged. They didn't even have to go to the vets to be punished for something that was clearly the dog's fault.
Goblet was incensed. She ran off as soon as she saw how Reilley reacted to be grabbed, incapacitated, and doused at the top of his neck with something that came out of a tube.
Stephen found her in the corner of our bedroom, underneath the cloth covering my bedside table.
She hissed and spit at him.
But she was still Advantaged.
And we didn't see her until much later last evening. She walked by us, gave us the Goblet-patented stink eye and stomped down the basement steps.
To shit on the basement floor, in all likelihood.
The best vet trip, ever, was when I decided we would take ALL our pets to the vet at the same time, in order to reap the benefit of the "multiple pet discount."
10% off the total bill.
One Saturday morning we stuffed the car full of crated and harnessed cats, four people, and the dogs in the back behind the gate.
Driving the highway from Fredericton to Oromocto, we looked like a travelling zoo. . .of psychotic pets and more psychotic pet owners.
I was driving. Because Goblet, who is usually never crated, always harnassed, HAS to sit in front, on Stephen's lap. She does not like the car. At all. And her primary method of coping with her discomfort, fear, anger and frustration at our audacity to remove her from the comfort of her home is to pant.
Picture Jack Nicholson as the Joker, panting outside your window while he plans your immenent death.
Reilley and Herman (its still raw to talk about Herman) are in their crates.
Herman was 18 pounds of muscle. He had an attitude that made Goblet look like Gandhi. Putting him in his small dog sized crate meant encasing your hands inside oven mitts, putting the crate on its end, and shoving him inside while he grips the sides of the crate, fighting you every step of the way.
Reilley has no free will. Emily managed to remove that from him a long time ago.
Nonetheless, he is VERY vocal about being crated and put in the car. Even with Em holding the crate on her lap, cooing sweet nothings at him, sticking her fingers through the bars of his cell, telling him it will be alright, and doesn't he remember how much he enjoyed the vet the last time he was there???
Tikka knows where she is going.
And is not happy at all.
Frankie, on the other hand, is blissfully ignorant of the fate that awaits him. His tail is wagging, he is pacing back and forth in the back of the car, and when we get to the vet, he leaps from the car and heads straight for the vet's front door.
He only did that once.
Because once he ascertained what actually happens at the vet, he never again leapt out of the car at the front door.
The cacophany and clamour in the car sounded like the Met Opera on a Saturday.
Except the lead performers were pissed off, hissing, caterwauling, panting, crated cats who sounded like nails on the chalkboard, supported in their feline aria by the background barking and whining of dogs who couldn't not, for the life of them, figure out how come we were bringing the cats along for our little road trip.
And that was just the car ride.
Inside the vet's office was no better.
The cats are lined up in their crates, still enraged by their incarceration, sitting side by side, looking like inmates being taken to the infirmary.
The dogs are sniffing the cats, rewarded for their care and concern over the welfare of their feline compatriots with paws shooting between the bars faster than the speed of light, nails bared, ready to remove as many layers of skin as they can in .3 milliseconds.
And the fun didn't end there. Weighing them, the vet's examination, getting their shots, pills being shoved down their throat, all of this happened with the grace and ease of trying to train elephants to walk on a tightrope while they hold flaming torches in their snouts.
Once we got back into the car, everyone, human, canine and feline settled in for the traumatic drive home, Stephen looked at me and said, "The 30.00 we saved with the "multiple pet discount" was not worth it."
And we have never taken the cats and dogs to the vet together again.
This afternoon, Stephen and I are going to Montreal for the weekend.
We'll be back Monday.
Stephen's father is celebrating his 80th birthday tomorrow.
His sister and her husband have been in Montreal for about 8 days, visiting from Vancouver.
Family and friends have come from Quebec City, Oakville, Toronto.
Its a big deal.
Saturday night we'll be having an intimate dinner for 30+ people at an Italian resturant somewhere in Montreal.
Sunday morning we'll attend St. Sophie's Ukranian Church, where Stephen's parents, his Aunt Irene and his sister will be singing in the choir.
And Stephen and I will be sitting in a pew, behind a pillar, so they can't see us.
I LOVE St. Sophie's! It is the most beautiful church I've ever been into. The first time I saw the sanctuary, my jaw literally dropped to the floor.
I can't even describe it, but I may be able to get some pictures.
If Em will lend me her camera.
None of our three, lovely children will be coming with us.
They have elected to stay home and "take care of the dogs."
Translation: they want the house to themselves while their parents are away.
I am sure they will look after the dogs, give them their meds, walk them, feed them, love them.
But just not with the same excitement, vigour, love and tenderness that I will.
Plus, I don't think anyone will sleep in our room so that the dogs can sleep on their pillows and blankets in comfort and peace.
Goblet will not even LOOK at any one in the house while Stephen is gone, and you can bet the deposits on the basement floor will increase in number and frequency.
So long as the house is still standing and that things are in the same shape they are in now, the pets are all breathing and fed, I'll be a happy woman.
Now eight hours in the car with Stephen. . . .
That is a whole other issue.
Title Lyric: Driving by Everything But the Girl
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