Trip To The House Of Pain

Most of you probably already know we got a kitten. If this is news, check out wamez for the update.

Little Storm and I had a bit of an adventure yesterday. She hurt her paw sometime the night before, and when I went in to feed her she didn't get up and run over to me like she normally does in the mornings. She was trembling really badly, and when she did try to walk, she could only hop forward once or twice before she'd just cry and curl up into a little shaking ball.

JB and I freaked out. My mind - of course - leaps straight to neurological disorder causing paralysis on the right side of her body.

So Storm and I went to the vet yesterday. We were there for 2 to 3 hours. I remember my dad telling me this story about how right after I was born (I had jaundice) the doctor had to take a blood sample to test. He stuck a needle in my ankle to draw the blood. My father said he was overcome with the urge to punch the doctor out when he heard me scream.

I felt a shadow of that at the vet's yesterday. Since we can't just ask her where it hurts, the vet grabbed her hurt arm and pulled on it, stretched it over her head, folded it up every which way, all of which made her cry piteously.

But then he squeezed her paw closed to test her wrist - so hard I saw his fingers shaking - and she SCREAMED.

She's just a baby, and she was twisting in his hands and screaming. It took all my will power not to jab my fingers into his eyes and grab her back from him. I liked the vet, and he'd been really gentle and had scratched her and kissed her, but at that moment I truly believed he had only become a vet because he's a sadist and wanted to torture little helpless animals without getting thrown in prison.

Now, all of that being said, it was a sprained wrist. They gave her a shot to take down the swelling, took some x-rays to confirm nothing was broken, and sent her home with me.

She had cried all the way to the vet's, one nonstop deluge of kitty pleas. But on the way home, she was mostly silent. Thinking, I feel sure, wherever in the world I was taking her next couldn't possibly be as awful as the place we had just left.