The battle cry of the si.., p.8
The Battle Cry of the Siamese Kitten, page 8
To be fair, three-quarters of the time we just pull regular smiley faces, which is moderately cheerful regular stuff with no lively emotional content. But it’s important to know that several highly emotional, but completely different, pulls in a row are routine too. Consequently, I tell students that an ability to withstand this emotional slot machine is key to not burning out.
At least we rarely, very rarely, pull the bored face emojis.
Encounter in the Woods
I like people. This is not a universal feeling in my profession. In fact, as mentioned at the beginning of the last story, some enter it thinking it will allow them to avoid people. Surprise! The animals come with people attached. But even though I like people, sometimes I want to be alone. This is impossible in the clinic and usually impossible at home too, so the best place to be alone is outdoors on a walk. Unfortunately, during the pandemic, aloneness on walks has become more challenging as 800,000 Winnipeggers, prevented from travelling elsewhere, shoehorn themselves into the available green space. Fortunately, we have a lot of green space and fortunately I have found some lesser-known trails, but the assurance of solitude that once existed is no longer there.
And so it was on a wintery Wednesday morning when I ventured down one of these secret paths through a beautiful aspen forest. This path and forest have a symmetry about them that I find especially appealing. I also love winding paths and mixed woods, but sometimes I’m in the mood for orderliness. This white snow-covered trail ran arrow-straight through a stand of black-specked white aspens identical in height. The straight, even lines in a black-and-white world were calming. I don’t recall why I needed calming, but I did, and this was helping.
Then in the distance I saw them. Because the path was straight, I could see two people and their dog a long way away. They were headed towards me and as there were no branching paths in between, we were going to meet. This was fine. I wanted solitude, but encountering a few people here and there wasn’t a problem. I just wanted to avoid the constant presence of people. Besides, they had a dog, and, as should be obvious by now, I like dogs.
As they approached, I could see that the people were an elderly couple, the man with a walking stick. Both were quite stooped and slow. I’m going to lie to you about the dog. It’s a white lie, and a lie of omission. I know what breed he was, but it has nothing to do with what happened next and I don’t want to feed breedist prejudice. So instead of naming the breed, I’ll just say that he was a large dog.
The path was narrow, and the snow was deep on either side of the path, so it made sense for me to step aside to allow them to pass. They said good morning, and I smiled and said good morning back and took a big step to my right. The dog was on a long leash in the old man’s left hand. I glanced at the dog as they passed and made the briefest eye contact with him.
In a fraction of a second, he lunged and snapped at me. Before I knew it, my left glove was off and in his mouth. Two my fingers buzzed from the padded impact of his teeth, but no skin was broken.
I was in shock. The old couple were in shock. The dog was snarling, hackles up, teeth bared, my glove still between his incisors.
Without any conscious decision having been made, I snatched at my glove and pulled it free. Then I quickly took several steps backwards, putting a couple of trees between me and the dog.
“I’m so sorry!” the woman said, while the husband strained ineffectually to pull the dog back. Normally the “I’m so sorry” is followed by “he never does that.” I took note of the fact that they did not say that, and wondered whether they were on this lonely trail for a reason.
“Maybe he senses that I’m a vet,” I said in an inane stab at lightening the mood.
They looked at me wide-eyed and didn’t say anything further.
“You need to be careful with him,” I added, inane again.
The couple both nodded, and after some more tugging on the dog’s leash, they struggled farther down the path. I waited until the dog was well out of lunging range before resuming my walk, this time at a quick pace and with an eye to a route that had the lowest chance of encountering them again.
* * *
There’s a perfect word in German (of course there is) for what I wrestled with afterwards: “Treppenwitz.” It literally translates as “staircase joke.” It refers to the clever retort you only think of after leaving a conversation. The rest of my walk was taken over by replays of the incident with all the things I should have said rather than the two ridiculous things I did say. But eventually I forgave myself and began to ponder the real lessons of that encounter.
First, I should not have made eye contact with that dog. I know better, much better. I would never look a strange dog in the eye in the clinic without first making at least a perfunctory judgment about his state of fear or aggression. Outside of the clinic these professional instincts sit a little looser in me.
Second, there needs to be more public education about which types of dogs are appropriate for which types of people. This dog was clearly “too much dog” for the old couple. Quite aside from any behavioural considerations, he was simply too strong for them. Perhaps he had been acquired for protection, or perhaps given to them for that purpose by one of their children. This is just speculation of course, but it is a scenario that I have seen far too often. It is never a good idea to get a dog for protection. The full reasons are beyond the scope of this story, but trust me when I say that it’s true. If having a large well-behaved dog happens to make you feel safer, that’s fine. Just don’t get one with that intent in mind. A dog must be a companion who is safe around all people. Once you start drawing lines to delineate which people he can be safe around and which he can’t, you’re asking for trouble.
And thirdly, there also needs to be public education about the fact that all dogs benefit from thorough socialization and appropriate professional training. Too many people think they can just go on common sense, or what they remember from having dogs on the farm, or just hoping for the best. Often it seems easy, but I’m here to tell you that even the smartest people have trouble knowing what kind of training will actually be needed. A dog that learns to sit quickly and shake a paw is not necessarily a dog that won’t bite. In fact, there is very little correlation between a dog’s intelligence with tricks and their propensity to bite. Smart dogs who seem well behaved at home bite strangers too. Socialization has been so much more difficult through the pandemic, and some early statistics are showing an increase in bites. This dog looked young, and he might have been a pandemic puppy too. Consequently, even more attention needs to be paid to training and to those socialization opportunities that do still exist.
Biters aren’t born, they’re made. But that being said, very few people intend for their dogs to bite. It’s a sin of omission rather than commission. They have omitted the act of research and proper training, not because they are bad people, but because they don’t know. Maybe dog licensing needs to be more like driver’s licensing, and the licence needs to be obtained before you get the dog and after you pass a test.
I felt bad for the old couple, because I’m sure they felt bad too, and I’m afraid they’re in for some heartbreak down the road.
Feline Transport Lesson
We’re all in our bubbles. It’s unavoidable. No matter how hard we try to cultivate empathy, we frequently have trouble understanding what it’s really like to be someone else. Professionals have particularly thick bubbles. We are so caught up in doing our thing that we lose sight of how odd our thing is, as objectively seen by much of the population. The dentist pokes at teeth all day long, every day, and has a hard time keeping in mind that the recipient only has that done once or twice a year and is not nearly as comfortable with it. Ditto the lawyers and their verbose documents. Ditto the accountants and their obscure calculations. And ditto the veterinarians and their assumptions about transporting cats — among the myriad other things we assume, such as, “Just apply one drop to each eye.” It’s rarely a matter of “just.”
My meandering point being, I don’t think we veterinarians really appreciate how difficult it is to bring some cats to the clinic. Dogs are more easily fooled, only catching on once they get to the clinic door, but it is the rare cat who cheerfully saunters into their carrier, purring in euphoric anticipation of the double joy of a car ride and a veterinary visit! “Give up my sunny napping spot to be hauled off to a strange place where some random human will poke at me? Yes, please!” says that rare cat. On further consideration, I think that cat is so rare that you had better check that it’s not actually a dog in deep disguise.
We blithely recommend exams and follow-ups and rechecks without giving much thought to how stressful this is for the cat and the owner. To be sure, most of these visits are medically necessary and unavoidable, but an acknowledgement on our part regarding the reality of the struggle is appropriate.
The cat transportation disconnect was brought home to me the other day when Lucy, our 14-year-old tortoiseshell, began vomiting more. We set the bar for concern regarding vomiting quite high. Many an evening we’ll be sitting reading or watching television, and we’ll hear that telltale hruk-hruk-hruk sound and just casually comment on it the way we might comment on the weather. “Wind’s picking up again.” “Cat’s barfing again.” The only difference with the latter is that we’ll be mindful of where we step once we get up. But Lucy was clearing that bar. She was vomiting daily and, as we were slow on the uptake, she increasingly vomited right in front of us or, on one memorable occasion, on my lap. That got my attention. It was time to take her into the clinic for some tests.
But Lucy hates going to the clinic. Hates it, hates it, hates it. How much does she hate it on a scale of one to ten, where one is that legendary rare “Yes, please!” cat, and ten are the patients I never see because they have ESP and disappear specifically on vet appointment days? (By the way, there are lots of these psychic cats, and they merit a story of their own some time.) Lucy is an eight. She’s ultimately a good cat who, while a fascist dictator with the other pets, is quite friendly with people. And she doesn’t have psychic powers. But on pure loathing of the experience alone she rates that eight.
The standard advice is to disguise the transport kennel as a “happy place” by placing treats and toys in it. We’ve done that and I’m sure it works for cats at, say, five or less on the scale, but for the six-plus club, it just gives them more time to plan their resistance. Imagine someone’s trying to force you to do something you don’t want to do, like clean out the gutters or have an elective colonoscopy. Are you fooled if they wear a disguise and offer you chocolate bars? No. You’re just more suspicious, aren’t you? And a little weirded out.
Lucy took the treats and batted at the toys, but she knew the moment we switched from Happy Place mode to Clinic Transport mode. We still put treats and toys in, but she knew. Maybe she’s a psychic kitty after all, or maybe she just picked up on our slightly more manic forced jollity.
“Lucy, look! Extra treats today! And that special catnip mouse! Don’t you want to go in?”
Her facial expression was clear: “How dumb do you think I am?” She didn’t go into the carrier. She just sat in front of it, regarding us with a wariness that told us that this was the crucial tipping point. Play our cards wrong, and she could bolt for the cat sanctuary above the basement ceiling tiles. The cats think of it as their secret rebel base. We know where it is, but we still can’t get them out of there. We’re like the Empire, with squeaky toys and bags of Temptations rather than the Death Star and Darth Vader. And even the Empire failed.
Move slowly and keep using the jolly treat-offering voice. Watch the escape routes. Be ready to pounce.
Lucy looked back and forth between us as we crept towards her. She was surrounded, but that didn’t mean she was just going to surrender. Far from it.
I’m not proud of what ensued. Two veterinarians with a total of 60 years of experience between them trying to get their own normally quite passive cat into a carrier. And this is something we expect our clients to do all the time. We did finally manage it. Vets 1–Cat 0. But it wasn’t easy. Even once we managed to stuff her in, Lucy was, despite her age, agile enough to keep hooking one paw after another on the edge. You’d pull one off, and another would shoot up. I swear she had grown extra legs. Octopussy. Eventually we sorted that out as well, and then the howling began.
It takes me ten minutes to drive to work. Einstein proved that time is relative. It travels at different speeds depending on a variety of factors. One factor he missed, but I’m sure future physicists will incorporate into their calculations, is cat wailing. A cat’s wail slows time down. The clock on the dashboard still showed ten minutes (because clocks can’t hear), but I know that 30 or 40 minutes of actual experienced time elapsed for both Lucy and me.
I was not angry at her. I was distraught for her. Lucy’s cries were so heartrending that I felt like a terrible cat owner. What must she think of me?! Is there anything worse than feeling judged by your pets? Is there anything worse than fearing that they think you’re abandoning them to a horrible fate? How do you people do it? How do you bring your animals to us day in and day out when this kind of stuff goes on?
I honestly felt like turning the car around and taking her home. I’m a veterinarian, for crying out loud. I should be able to figure this out without subjecting her to tests. This was utter balderdash, of course. Tests are essential sometimes and not having the courage to run them is a form of cruelty worse than a ten-minute (even if it feels like a 30- or 40-minute) car ride, and whatever stresses follow at the clinic.
I didn’t turn around. And Lucy was fine at the clinic. She was scared, of course, but she was no longer caterwauling like she was being dragged off to hell by a brace of pit fiends. Her tests all came back fine. She was just constipated.
She yowled the whole way home too, but this time I didn’t feel nearly as bad.
So, to you people out there whose cats hate coming to the vet, my hat’s off to you. I get it. It is not easy, and it is not fun, but if you love them, it’s what you have to do.
But explain “love hurts” to a cat, and see how far you get.
The First Day
I wish I could give you the details. I wish I could tell you what the weather was like, or how busy the clinic was, or even what day of the week it was. I assume Monday, but that’s not necessarily true. And I especially wish I could tell you about my first patient, my first ever patient as a licensed veterinarian. But I have no idea. It’s not that I have a poor memory — in fact my memory is generally quite good — it’s just that at the time it didn’t seem like a big enough deal to be worthy of remembering. In retrospect, that’s pretty weird, especially for someone like me who celebrates a raft of obscure milestones (I recently turned 666 months old), and who is so sentimental that he still has all of his childhood plush toys (“Woo-Woo” and the gang. Woo-Woo is a green corduroy dachshund. Shut up.).
This memory blank may be because starting at Birchwood just seemed like another small step in an ongoing series of small steps towards becoming a fully fledged, fully functioning adult. Moreover, I saw it as temporary. I’d work there a couple of years to save up to travel, and then after travelling I’d go to graduate school and eventually become a researcher or professor.
It may also be because I was clueless. A good example of this cluelessness occurred just a week prior, when I left home in Saskatoon, where I had continued to live all through university. On the day of that final departure, I packed my rusted-out old Honda Civic full to the point of blocking the rear window. It had all my favourite possessions (yes, including Woo-Woo), and even a few essentials. My parents hovered in the background. They didn’t say much. There were hugs and kisses and goodbyes and promises to call when I arrived, but honestly, in retrospect I’m sure my mind was on which cassette tape I was going to play first. Given that it was the summer of 1990, it would have been down to Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever or a mixed tape of late ’80s tunes sent to me by my friend Mark. The fact that this was a watershed moment in my life and in the lives of my parents was somehow entirely lost on me. Now that I have children of my own who are approaching their own de-nesting, my heart clenches when I think back on how oblivious I was then and what my parents must have been feeling.
Back to Birchwood. So, for all the reasons outlined above, I don’t remember much about that day, but I do remember some things about the first few days. The first thing is embarrassing. It’s how I dressed. I was determined not to be a doctor cliché, so instead I dressed like a different kind of cliché. I dressed like someone trying too hard to look casual, even though they don’t feel casual. This meant polo shirts, cargo pants, and sandals. I’m German, so I wore socks in my sandals. This presented not only style issues, but also practical issues. It takes little imagination to come up with a list of reasons why sandals are a bad idea in a veterinary clinic. Apparently, I failed to conjure even that little imagination at that time. My bosses were tolerant folk and didn’t say anything, but there were a few raised eyebrows. And on one especially hot day I wore shorts. Still more silent eyebrow raising. It took a fellow young veterinarian pointing out to me that my clothing choices were “bold” to change my perspective. When he said “bold,” it was clear from his tone that he meant “dumb.” Moreover, I looked like I was barely out of puberty and I was trying to command the respect of clients who were used to Dr. Clark, my tie-wearing senior boss who was a professional-looking veterinarian straight of central casting. He was so revered that a group of clients had given him a statue of a dignified veterinarian for his 25th anniversary in practice (my own 25th came and went with a clutch of Facebook likes). I decided that perhaps dressing the part would be helpful after all. And it was. By the end of the week, I had been to Eaton’s and had splurged on three dress shirts, two pairs of nice pants and two natty ties. And you know what, wearing this, I weirdly felt more confident as a veterinarian. This is probably not weird to you, but it was to me at the time.
