Anyone that knows me well knows that I don’t have a fondness for children. Those same people probably know that I have a great fondness for my own children, who happen to be feline. Some people think it’s cheating to consider yourself a parent to pets, because animals are somehow less worthy of love and care than humans. I’ll be honest, it is easier to raise pets than humans, which is why I do it. However, this last week or so has leveled the experience between kids and pets for me.
One of my kids had the shits for an extended period of time and the other one needed caught up on shots (no anti-vaxxers in this household). So I took them both to the vet and left them for the day for their procedures. When I picked them up after work, I was given a prescription and a special diet for shitty. Yay, we get to spend $50 for a bag of cat food now.
As soon I got them loaded in the car and we started moving, the big boy sneezed. I was like, “no fucking way.” Little girl had an upper respiratory infection early in her life, so I knew what a sneeze means. Over the next couple of days, he seemed to be fighting it off pretty well. However, little girl did not. I took her back to the vet and got her diagnosis and a prescription. $100 for meds! And that’s where I felt like a parent. I took my kid to see you and you got her sick and now I have to pay all this money for drugs and I have to dose her 2x a day and she’s going to hate it and what the fuck cat wants to eat berry flavored medicine?
Surprisingly, she bounced back after only about 3 dosings, which I think is impressive. But, while she was improving, big boy was failing, hard. I called the vet to get a second prescription for him, and unfortunately, I lost a full day in getting the new drugs. If they could have told me the dosing for his weight, I could have just used some of my existing medication. But whatever, my cat is miserable.
Having a sick, miserable kid makes you sad, which is my next parental experience. All you want is for them to get better. And his little sister wants him to get better, too. I could tell by the way she would constantly check up on him. And he was in really rough shape. He wasn’t responsive to any stimulus. For a couple of days, he didn’t want to get out of bed at all. He stopped eating wet food because he couldn’t smell. But he still had the energy to resist medication.
This cat has a big fucking mouth. In fact, one of his potential names when he first came to the house was “mouth”. It’s like a bear trap, and like a trap, he can clamp it right down and refuse to have any medication shot in. My eventual success came when I switched from a 10cc syringe to a 3cc syringe. He needed 12cc dosings, so 4-3cc shots was much easier with a skinny syringe than working with that fat one.
Big boy did not bounce back after a few dosings like little girl did. It took a few days and the improvement was really slow, but faintly noticeable. Yesterday, he turned the corner and I knew it when I went out on the patio to check on him and he came and greeted me with his tail held straight up. It was a pretty joyous moment to see him happy again. He still sniffled and sneezed, but his mood was improved and that was a sign that things are going to be ok. Later in the evening when I checked to see if he was ready to come inside, he bounded away with his tail up. After a couple of days picking up and carrying a limp and listless bag of fur, it was a wonderful sight.
And that’s the last parental similarity. You want to see your kids happy. I’ve been very lucky in my time to have not gone through the experience of having sick pets. This last week or so has been revelatory in how much emotional investment you have in your kids and what they mean to your own happiness.
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