The Black & White Effect

So things are different now. For one, I have successfully become a Veterinary Technician. School is done and I've been talking it easy for a bit and spending lots of time with my four-legged buddies. The next big challenge is finding a fer-god's-sakes JOB as a vet tech, before all my new found knowledge trickles out of my gray matter and disperses like so much fluff into the atmosphere. I'm certain I wake up slightly dumber each day I have off (kind of like that book Flowers for Algernon), so I'd better blow the dust off my resume and suck in my gut to squeeze back into my "interview" dress pants. Hopefully the interviews are short or I may pass out from the sheer effort of compression.  Job hunting is a nerve-wracking business (especially in one whose nerves are so easily wracked), but I look forward to beginning my career.  Lots to think about. Lots to do.

This last year also saw the loss of our poor little Panda kitty. I awoke one morning to find she had passed away lying by the couch. The vet thinks she may have had some kind of congenital heart condition that finally overtook her.   Whatever it was...we miss her.

On the day she passed away, I had a big test at school, and despite the grief of losing our shy girl so young, I made the trek to V-Building and set myself up in an exam room to study (our vet school building houses a mock vet clinic, complete with a surgical suite and patient exam rooms).  The particular exam room I chose was housing one of our school cats (we spay, neuter and treat animals from the Quebec SPCA in our teaching hospital) who didn't fit into a proper cage because he was so big.  The many-toed Dimitri was depressed and neurotically pulling all the hair out of his tail so he had been moved into an exam room in the hopes that more space would cheer him up and encourage him to eat.  As soon as I put my things done in the room he claimed my coat as his own personal bed. Black and white cats aren't really favorite, but he was a nice big boy and friendly enough.

The studying wasn't going well, as can be expected, and I was pretty sniffly while looking at platelet abnormalities but thinking about Panda.  Dimitri soon tired of shedding on my coat and wandered over to me, where he did THIS:

(I kid you not, this is a photo from my shitty cell phone from that day)

That night he was firmly tucked under the covers of our bed. We'd agreed to take him for the week before his neuter, so he could relax and hopefully stop plucking his nearly bald tail.  I may not have been a big black and white cat fan, but any feline that presses his forehead against mine when I'm sad deserves a spot on the bed, don't you think?

As the week progressed, I was glad to receive the news that the big lug would be going to a home at a riding stable where we would be loved by all the kids who came for lessons and live in the heated tack room with another of our school cats as a friend. Woo hoo! Good news for the big boy!
His neuter came and went, and a few days post surgery he came back home with the sniffles and a bald tail.  He was being a sad sack in his cage again, and the first thing he did upon returning to our apartment was to dig under the covers of our bed and make himself a cave.  I found him an hour later, and we had a lovely nap with him tucked securely in my armpit.

We only had to wait for the other cat going to the stable to be neutered, and finish Dimitri's post-surgical pain medications, and the big tuxedo would be home free...or so we thought.

Being pilled or overhandled made him wheeze/choke/honk for over a minute once released.  The vets at school were concerned, and we brought him in for x-rays.  Cloudy lungs and observation of his goose impression brought about a tentative diagnosis of asthma.  Dusty horses + dusty hay = no dice for Dimitri living at a barn.  The veterinarian brought me into her office and kindly let me know that a cat with asthma was not a good adoptable candidate, and he would not be going to the stable, or back to the shelter either.  She said we would all have to try our best to find him a home within the program, or consider euthanasia.  She had a point. It is hard enough to find homes for healthy cats in this overpopulated feline world.  We decided to do a three week heavy duty course of medications over the Christmas break of two type of antibiotics and an anti-parasitic just in case there was some other type of illness going on that we could knock out of him.  This sweet cuddly boy deserved a chance, on that we all agreed.

It was a long three weeks of thrice-a-day medication.  Nik and I often got more Panacur on the walls or on ourselves than into the cat, but despite an entire pharmacy being shoved down his throat, Dimitri remained friends with us.  He also made a romantic conquest of our Stubcat...

I was delighted when a classmate agreed to adopt him, although they needed some time for home renovations to finish before he could go home.  Dimitri would finally get a forever home in one more month.

Then another month rolled by.

And another.

Nearly 8 months later, that damn cat has his own collar and tag with my phone number on it. He sits on the edge of the tub while I shower (his blobby silhouette looks like Norman Bates's mother through the shower curtain) and he spends his days plotting to steal my seat every time I get up.

He wails for food constantly despite being the size of a small orca whale.

And those toes! Ewwwww!

And yet everyday he runs to me mewing to rub his big face against mine.

...I guess I'm a black and white cat fan after all.