The Six Million Dollar....Cat

"Mrs. P,  we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic cat. Mordecai will be that cat. Better than he was before. Better. Stronger.  Faster. " 

I took the day off on Monday. Phoning your boss and saying "I'm not coming in today. I'm not sick - I'm taking cat leave " is always guaranteed to make your boss chuckle first thing on a Monday if she has any sense of humour at all.  I tend to revert to joking when I'm under pressure. Not everybody gets that. 

There are three types of people in this world. There are people who aren't animal lovers. I don't judge them. They're just missing a crucial gene. It's not their fault. There are people who say they are animal lovers and actually "own" pets, but they treat them like pets and that's OK too.  And then there are people (like me) that have sleepless nights when their animals aren't quite right and take cat sick days and treat their animals like part of the family. And maybe that means we have an extra gene that makes us unable to identify that our animal mates aren't actually people and probably don't need specially made quilts and home made cooked meals and that despite the movie, Dr. Doolittle, animals can't actually speak. 

Whatever. 

Rewind to Sunday night. Mordecai, our big, laid back ,cool ginger cat had been playing a game of tag in the back yard with Indy in the late afternoon and Indy's Modus Operandi for winning was to plant his dinner plate sized paw squarely in Mordy's back and flatten him to the ground barking "Tag -You're it -Cat  ".  Mr. P witnessed the carnage and practically had to peel Mordy off the concrete with a shovel while Indy stood by feeling inordinately pleased with himself for winning the tag round. If I had a dollar for every time I've told my "children" to play nicely or I've screeched "you'll take someone's eye out with that stick" I wouldn't be looking down the barrel of another day at paid employment. 

But on Sunday night when the normally silent Mordecai spent the night looking at me and intermittently yowling (loudly and frequently) I was a bit worried. This is the cat who only speaks when he wants to eat or when he wants you to turn the tap on since he hasn't mastered the art of flicking the tap on without the assistance of someone with opposable thumbs.  I'm sure that's the only reason he hasn't acted on his master plan for world domination. He needs us to do tap duty. 

So I checked him out thinking maybe Indy's paw-in-the-back routine had busted something crucial. Nup- no broken bones. Full range of movement. Still jumping up and down off stuff he wasn't supposed to be jumping on and off like the kitchen benches.  So I figured a 15 pound cat being rugby tackled by a 100 pound dog probably meant that Mordecai was feeling a little sore and sorry for himself . If someone dropped something 6 and a half times my weight on me I'd be feeling pretty sorry too. At that stage I was hoping he'd rally by morning because every single time I go anywhere near the vet I need to take out a second mortgage on my house. Did I ever tell you the story about how our dog Lola was bitten by a snake and had to have anti venom? That shit costs a bajillion dollars. I guess milking snakes for their poison to make anti venom is an expensive business, further convincing me I'm totally in the wrong line of work. Oh and Lola wasn't bitten by a snake. She ate a green mouldy bone. I know that because the same thing happened two years later. So you can understand my hesitance to barrel down to the vet for a bruise on a Sunday night no less.  

Sunday night was a barrel of laughs (insert sarcasm here ) Mordecai is the kind of cat that ensconces himself on the bed at night and doesn't make a peep or move till morning when he is forcibly removed with a crow bar. He spent the night jumping up and down off the bed, stomping on my head, and speaking to me in very loud cat-speak. Coupled with Mr. P's freight train snoring I had no bloody hope of a little shut eye. 

Monday came and he wasn't any better. In fact he was worse. Right after he started throwing up and I muttered nasty things to Indy about dogs with big paws who don't know their own strength I called the vet. And within an hour Mordecai was in surgery for kidney failure due to a blockage.  So I came home and apologised to Indy and thanked him for stamping on the cat because we might not have been watching Mordy so closely if we weren't considering the possibility that he had a broken back and then I started crossing my fingers and toes and thanking my lucky stars that I do understand cat language and listened to the voices in my head. Normally voices in your head are a bad thing. Ask any serial killer. 

The surgery was a success and Mordy came home last night with a plethora of really cool drugs.  I don't think the vet got the joke when I asked if she could slip a couple of extra Valium tabs in there for me. Some people have no sense of humour.  I came home with a considerably heavier credit card bill. There's 80 yards of fabric I won't be buying in Hawaii.

Aside from the fact my cat is a rampant junkie and fell off the ottoman last night because he was stoned out of his gourd and then looked at me all surprised like I'd pushed him off, and aside from the fact he's weaving and slurring his meows and aside from the fact he's become obsessed with licking his private cat parts he seems to be on the mend. 

Drugs are Bad ...M'kay...(a little South Park reference there ) 

And because he's such a special cat he now needs to eat a special diet. Pound for pound this new food costs approximately the same price as European White truffles. And I just know he's going to live until he's 47 in people years. There's something rotten in the state of Denmark when your cat eats better than you do. 

And it's typical of me to have a long blogland absence and to mark my comeback with a post about my cat's drug habit. That's just the way we roll at Maison Pyjamas. No class. 

P.S. Just be thankful I didn't include a picture of my cat's penis in this post. I sent one to the vet this morning with the subject line "cat porn " so she could tell me whether it was normal for cat privates to look like that because I've never taken it upon myself to peer intently  at my cats whatsit before.