Johnny’s Visit to the Vet

 Johnny needed his teeth cleaned. ASAP. Too much human flesh in his teeth, I presume. So I made him an appointment at the JSPCA animal clinic, which is an 8 minute walk from my apartment without Johnny, and a 20 minute walk carrying Johnny. The plan was to bring him in in the morning and pick him up after work.

I warned my roommates the day before that they might hear hair raising shrieking in the morning, but not to worry, since it was just Johnny carrying on. I took the carrier out the night before so I could surprise him the next morning without having to fish him out from under the bed (sustaining multiple injuries in the process). The method for getting large, obstreperous cats into their carrier when you’re only one person is to stand it up with the opening facing up, and then drop the cat in head first. It may not be the most pleasant method for the cat, but it works.

The walk to the clinic was unpleasant as well. One of the downstairs neighbors came out to make sure no one was torturing babies in the hallway. I informed him I was just taking my cat to the vet and he seemed satisfied by that explanation and went back inside. Carrying a 23 lb. cat anywhere is a trial, and not for the weak of arms. By the time I got there, I was afraid I had lost the use of my arms forever. Ditto with my hearing.

The secretary asked me all kinds of questions while Johnny scared off a few small dogs, one of them being, “has he fasted for 12 hours?”

“No...... was he supposed to?”

“Yes.”

“No one told me that.”

“When was the last time he ate?”

“Twenty minutes ago, before we left the house.”

In the end, the vet decided he would just do the procedure later in the day and let me know when I could pick him up (figuratively speaking, since I wasn’t sure my arms would have recovered by then). I couldn’t even lift him onto the table. The vet had to help me, prompting the question, “whoa, is that all your cat, or is that carrier?” I assured him that it was the cat which weighed that much, not the carrier. He also asked me if Johnny was friendly, and I told him he’d better wait until the cat was under anesthesia before examining him if he had any kind of attachment to his skin.

I knew that there was no way I was going to be able to carry him back to the apartment, so I sent my roommate (the one with a car) a message asking him if he would be around in the evening and if he wanted to do me a favor. He said sure, no problem, he’d bring us back by car. So I sent him the address and a screenshot of a map with a “we are here” arrow.

I got the call from the vet on the way home from work, and called my roommate to let him know I was on my way there. When I got there, I told them I was there to pick up my cat. The first thing they asked me was, “what is that creature you brought us?” Everyone had questions about what kind of cat he is. It was as if the vet had pulled him out of the carrier, and then called everyone over to look at the humongous mutant cat. I explained that he’s a Norwegian Forest cat and that yes, they’re all that big. Meanwhile, Johnny was scaring away a large American bulldog puppy, while high on anesthesia.

I called my roommate to come get us. Thirty minutes later (it’s a 3 minute drive) I sent him a message to make sure he hadn’t been attacked by rabid wombats or something, and he called me to ask me where exactly the place was. I explained it to him and it turns out he’d been wondering around the neighborhood for half an hour with no real idea of where he was going. From this I learned that he requires instructions in writing, and that I need to make him repeat them to me afterwards to confirm that he knows where he’s going.

The vet had told me to give Johnny a small amount of food when I got home, wait an hour or so, and then give him a little bit more to make sure it wouldn’t upset his stomach. I put a handful or so of food in his bowl when we got home, and after he finished it, he just looked at me like where’s the rest? I went into the kitchen to eat something, and heard a loud thud coming from my room. I ran back in there to make sure he was ok, only to find that he had knocked over a 14 kilo bag of food and was gorging himself on what had spilled out. I tried to scoop up the food while he was still munching around my hands.

Watching Johnny stoned on ketamine, was quite an experience. My roommates asked if he could be like that all the time. They were able to walk by him without getting hissed or swiped at. He just meandered around the apartment with no real destination. He kept wandering over to his food or water dish, taking a bite or a swallow, forgetting why he was there, and then staring at the wall for the next 10 minutes. He repeated this procedure for maybe an hour before wandering off. I knew he was feeling more alert when I found him in the bathtub. And he slept on my bed at night as he usually does. By the next morning, my roommates were lamenting his return to normal, after his usual morning hissy fit.